A Merciful Doom
by CatalystCtrl98
Summary: Holding a candle to the darkness has never been easy but the evil within does not stay complacent. A lone technician grapples with his demonic resurrection. He is given an ultimatum: find the Doom Slayer and eliminate him or face more twisted incarnations of himself. Amidst the genocidal harvest of all sapient life, the demon must kill for any hope at saving his fractured soul.
1. You Have Been Warned

_A/N: In the beginning, I vowed never to do OC's again . . ._

 _Wow, that came out a lot like the dark intro of a movie. Sorry about that! This initially wasn't going to be a crossover and mainly something I wanted to do for myself after finally playing the new DOOM._

 _So what better way to celebrate the game-play reveal of Doom: Eternal with a bit of an expanded universe, shall we?_

 _Can't believe I wrote this shit abroad on my crappy phone, back when I was sans computer for a half-year. It was getting so long that the program (believe it or not, I used an inbuilt app for note-taking to write this beast) would briefly crash the screen every time I tried opening it, so I heaved the file over here._ _Divvying it up to buy me some time for my other project: Mass Transcendence._

 _As such, this story is implied to contain a modicum of blood and gore, (a morsel, nothing the little people have to worry about) suicidal thoughts and actions (just like the pharmaceutical companies taking over your TV ads) . . . and . . . oh yeah, cursing!_

 _Sorry, I guess I'm lashing out with a bit of sarcasm when I saw a great Mass Effect Fanfiction nearly ruined by an absurd apology in the summary!_ _ **IF**_ _you're sensitive to these strong topics, don't go_ _ **in**_ _and_ read _it. More importantly, don't give the writers a hard time because you suffered a panic attack and conveniently forgot that it was_ _ **you**_ _who had the idiocy to willingly go in an environment that triggers you. If you want the story taken down, be forward about it or better yet, just leave and go fuck yourself someplace else. Goddamn pansies . . ._

 _I don't make_ _ **any**_ _money from either Bethesda or Bioware or from any other publisher underneath the sun just like every other goddamn writer on this godforsaken site. (except some shit writers. Fifty Shades anyone?)_

 _Ahhhh . . . . where were we?_

 ** _A Merciful Doom_**

 **Pt. 1: You Have Been Warned**

Follower Jacob Rienfield was exactly that. A follower.

A blurred face in a million of _unremarkables_ just like him.

He had been blinded to the ulterior motives of the UAC; the insidious methods the hierarchy kept maintaining the status quo. The little people like him were always the ones taking the fall for the higher ups dropping the ball while it rolls and tramples the expendable. The cannon-fodder.

 _No, not blinded. Wrong choice. More like . . . lack of imagination._

He hated it all. And that spirits-damned virtual intelligence, always reminding him of the shitty reasons why he came and chiming their work schedules every day. Even Vega, the only piece of cool tech that seemed agreeable to him during orientation was locked from him. Something about only level three candidates being able to use him. It was a collectively suffocating, desensitizing initiation. A damn cult of work ethic that should have been obvious from the start.

In the end, it was all insanity. It was _all_ bullshit. The mission, the facility, the workplace, and he would have been able to live with it all, just like the countless people living or dead who confronted that daily reality. But those special projects were not a lie and many of the _wrong_ people paid that price.

In one of these monumentally asinine fuck-ups, a hell portal had opened.

He came here as a lowly engineer, learning and honing his previously freelance skills on the job. On one of his trips to the desert hellscape of Mars, he was sent to repair some heating equipment around one of the bases which happened to be _waaay_ out of his league in terms of clearance. Really, a level two candidacy and in response, they dispatched a security guard to accompany him. He didn't mind as long as he didn't interfere.

 _I suppose you aren't guarding the secret cookie jar,_ he thought, casting a cursory glance behind him, smiling sarcastically underneath his helmet. Sardonic humor happened to be his specialty and his preferred weapon to cope.

The howl of the planets wind, the clouds of sediment rising off and on the distance; it was the only place he felt a serene calmness, away from prying eyes and the forced work ethic medicine they had to down . . . though the Mars surface was anything but calm.

The weather on this lonely planet was inhospitable for a reason. It took decades to lay a proper foundation and even more to get it operational. Frequent sandstorms, rapid heating and cooling during the night and day cycle, rocky, dangerous terrain . . . it all was designed to make the very brightest of our technology fizzle out sooner rather than later. It was hard to believe this place could have once been teeming with microbial life.

He waved his scanner over the ground, following its pings towards the cable. The Martian surface tended to bury much of the small infrastructure in a matter of hours. It took a veritable army to maintain life support and Rienfield was just another cog in that machine.

"A-ha! Got it."

He pulled out his belt of excavation tools and went to work digging up the grave of the glorified AC.

It ended up taking an hour to clean the connections. The guard dutifully reminded him that a storm was heading their way. He merely glanced up from time to time to confirm its meandering advance across the plateau. Still a way's off.

A brief, painful spark later, the device hummed to life, kicking up a fit of sand.

"Come on, let's go."

He dusted himself off and set a map display on his device to guide him towards . . . well, not home, just a dwelling for now. His visor was suddenly obscured by a cloud of sand enveloping him. The storm seemed to materialize out of nowhere. None of the readings he took before the trek had indicated something like this. The map up link fizzled into nothingness. He kept his eye on the security guard who hobbled over to him.

"Don't say I didn't warn you."

"Shut up," he growled, and the words were swept away with the wind. He fumbled for his old-fashioned compass and watched as it spun circles. Either magnetic or electrical causes were disrupting navigation though it was the possible the two weren't mutually exclusive.

Spinning around, he motioned for the guard to stick close and set off in a random direction. He then promptly felt the sediment collapse underneath his outstretched boot. The guard yanked him back on his ass from the hidden cliff edge.

"Visibility has clearly gone to shit."

"Yeah, no kidding."

He caught sight of something blood-red in the haze and pointed it out to his unwitting partner.

It was one of those elite guards, the ones who only defended the most secret of projects. He hardly ever saw them up close, but the company bulletins always reminded you to heed their orders or face immediate expulsion . . . yada, yada, yada.

 _But what was one doing all the way out here?_

He gestured for his partner to follow as he tracked a safer route down. The artificer wanted a clearer confirmation. Only the Red Coats could help them get back to base; their equipment was state of the art. He crept through the bedrock and gestured at the man to lower himself. He peered past a boulder to find a whole squad of the shiny suits milling about. They were taking stock and guarding the area in a tight perimeter. Some others, the techies Jacob presumed, were setting up munitions, utility belts, and what looked like blue markers.

"Is it done?"

Rienfield felt the vibration speak more than the noise. It was the only reason he kept focused on the tech instead of searching for a faceless speaker in the sands like his partner did. Jacob squinted into the cloud and saw as a massive, silvery cybernetic being emerge from the shadows.

"What the hell?" For the young artificer, this was news. He'd heard of robots for the rich but as the heir to nothing except a hungry family, seeing one in person as big as 8 feet tall was mind blowing.

"No fucking way. Is that good 'ol Samuel Hayden?" The guard gushed.

He peered at his partner like he had grown an eyeball for a flashlight. That couldn't be possible. He thought he had died or something . . . cancer, some rare condition.

 _Wasn't that the way all great minds go?_

The guard started up as if to explain his outburst, having not realized that it was irrelevant now. "Quiet!" Jacob demanded as he continued to eavesdrop on the conversation. Something about Lazarus and the seven ages of hell or something. It was all just mumbo-jumbo to him.

They began shouting something. It sounded like "Clear?"

The wind suddenly whipped itself into a full-blown frenzy. A tornado burst from the sky, looping and twisting towards a glowing point in the ground. The gravel cracked as right before their eyes, a portal opened.

But something went wrong. A piece of containment field fizzled out and in response, the hell portal dilated to massive sizes. The boulder they were hiding behind was swallowed as were the other figures.

He pulled on the dumbstruck guard, trying to pull him away from the vortex. The idiot tripped over a rock and he was brought down with him. The sand shifted, and they began sliding closer. Their hands scrabbled for purchase, but the sand simply dissolved in their grasping fingers. The guard was panicking and began yanking on his leg like a puppy. He tried to kick him off, but it would result in him losing what semblance of traction he had.

The black hole roared once more, and it finally devoured them whole.

. . .

. . .

A rumbling voice came into consciousness.

"Leave them. They're dead weight. Nothing lasts long here, corporal . . . except _them_. Proceed to the objective."

The jostling of small arms disguised the beleaguered grunt that escaped Jacob. It was the acrid smell that rapidly awoke him. In the distance, the thumping of boots leveled off into nothingness.

It took him a few minutes to work the stiffness from his extremities and limbs. His eyes stung harshly when he exposed them, the stinging ash repeatedly blinding him. He had no context for the ambient smells that assailed his senses except for one word: death.

Slowly but surely, he stumbled to his feet and nearly vomited with how pungent the smell was. Jacob glanced around and found nothing but rocky cliffs. Down below was obscured in a soupy dark haze, a bottomless pit. The sky was in a perpetual state of dusk, orange and golden but with no obvious source of light.

The man sharply inhaled in surprise of an obvious fact. He could breathe! His helmet must have broken off and fallen. Hell had air, however polluted it was by indistinguishable scents . . . or it could be poisoned with carbon monoxide and he was effectively a dead man walking.

Some floating spires glowed of in the distance with what looked like red electricity arcing through the structures. Maybe that's how they could hover. Could it be the storied Argent Energy? The reason why he was stuck here? And if it could keep mountains afloat, could they be on an island in the sky?

His imagination got the better of him and he gagged at the sudden wave of vertigo that hit him.

A groaning sound caught his attention and he lumbered around. It was the forgettable personnel from earlier. He went to shake the man awake, or at the very least, knock him down a few notches for getting them sucked into this hellscape but begrudgingly, he found that his services were no longer needed.

The man pulled himself up as his rebreather loudly expelled oxygen. Rienfield made no attempt to help his partner up but the whispering strands of _no_ being crazily repeated by the marine had begun to unsettle him.

"Have you gone off the deep end already?"

The man jumped at his voice, or rather flopped, as he was still lying on the ground after an unsuccessful attempt. He pulled himself up to his elbows, breathing heavily.

"How the hell are you breathing in this stuff? Are you insane?"

Rienfield dusted off his helmet, found it was a hollow piece of junk and tossed it aside. "It wasn't my idea and speaking of ideas, how about we get the fuck out of here, huh?"

Finally, he offered his hand and the prone marine took it. "You obviously have no idea where we are," he grunted as Jacob pulled him to his feet. "According to the brochures, we're effectively stuck in a den crawling with a bunch of blood-thirsty demons! I don't even have my gun anymore. We won't last two seconds in here!"

"Keep your voice down!" He growled in a hushed manner. "Or you'll get us killed in a heartbeat."

"Alright then what do you suggest?"

Rienfield didn't respond immediately to the prodding. Instead, he wandered off and bent down at the last place he saw the group of Elites standing. He rubbed some sand between his fingers in contemplation and let it dissipate to the ground in a sparkling heap. Bones ground to dust. Jacob didn't give voice to the troubling words Hayden had spoken.

"Right now, the only chance we have is to follow the excursion team that got dropped down with us. With any luck, we might able to get some protection," he said, rising to his feet slowly.

The armored soldier made a show of looking around. "They must be a way's off by now and I don't see a single damn footprint anywhere."

Rienfield held up his intact conduit scanner like a pair of house keys.

"Not without this, you can't."

It was the same piece of tech he used to find the buried cable. Now it would be their only guide in this hellscape they had traded for another wasteland. He flicked open the latch and his scanner managed to barely distinguish a trail bobbing and weaving down the cliff.

"Lead the way." The man shrugged and Rienfield obliged him. In the radio silence that followed, they had made their way down the slope very carefully. The trail was getting hotter and brighter with his scanner.

"Come on, hurry up. We need to be faster than them, so we can catch up." Jacob explained as if to a little child.

The man was huffing and puffing as subtle as a steam train. "Well then," he managed to get out through short gasps, "maybe you should have been the soldier."

Rienfield paused at the comment and mused about that prospect. Yes, his evaluators had said just as much but he politely refused claiming guard duty in the foundry wasn't his cup of tea. At least as an engineer, he could routinely get a breath fresh of air outside, so to speak. The Martian surface supposedly had demonic sightings from time to time but none he had remotely encountered in his three odd years working for the UAC. His concealed sidearm still clung insistently to his thigh, another detail he refused to let on. All this to feed his family and make sure that they had enough power to even read.

 _Just don't think about where you are or the very real possibility of hidden eyes following your every move. You'll be home in time for dinner._

They continued to pick their way through the craggy bedrock as the wind rushed by with a demonic howl. It made him jump every time the breeze kicked up.

Then they began to hear what sounded like fireworks. A red flash lit up somewhere in the distance followed by more explosions. More gunfire. Something had beset the search team and judging by the echoing screams, they were getting torn apart out there.

The hairs stood up on the nape of his neck. "Stop, maybe we should go around. There's no telling how much resistance they could be drawing towards . . ."

He turned around as he finished his sentence.

". . . us."

The soldier groaned and coughed blood, gingerly touching the gaping harpoon in his gut before he was pulled, kicking and screaming over the edge by a barbed tentacle.

Impish looking demons spawned all around Jacob and began screeching like banshees. A pained groan escaped him as he cupped an ear with one hand and armed himself with his pistol in the other. His hands were trembling. He had never shot anything before except a nail gun. Panic was beginning to set in and so did the clouds it seemed.

A tremble shook the ground where he stood but the gremlins rushed at him seemingly unperturbed. He managed to blow the heads off one . . . two before they knocked him down. Screaming, his vision obscured by a pile of racing digitigrade limbs, they quickly pried his environmental gear off piece by piece as the others scratched and diced his face. One swipe hit his eye and he roared, blinded.

It didn't occur to him to prepare for death; a path he already was set upon. Pain and evisceration were his world now. His pistol fired wildly, catching another few square in the chest but not enough. If anything, he was buying more time for his agonizing expiration.

Another boom, even bigger than the last one raised him into the air, knocking a few off his back. The gremlins scrambled to their feet, but they weren't looking at him anymore. They were hissing at the newcomer, one he barely caught with his good eye. It was a humanoid beast, standing upright at damn near eight feet tall with purple, beefy musculature and a white skull, except the thing had no eyes to speak off. Just rows of shark teeth gnashing and chewing on what he assumed to be a previous kill.

The thing roared, and the gremlins gave his slashed arm a possessive squeeze. They were defending their spoils. The demons rushed off to confront his inadvertent savior. The imps clambered on the beast's back as the blind warrior swung and knocked the others off the edge with a sweep of its massive tree-trunk hands. The last one that hadn't sunk its teeth in yet was split in two with a pump of its fists. The behemoth turned his attention to the rest and began picking them off like ticks, squashing, ripping, and tearing them off its back. Skulls cracked to the ground and were promptly turned to gore underneath its hooves.

It was an awesome display of raw power that captivated the wounded human until he realized they were fighting over him. When the blind demon won, he was dead meat.

Somehow, he still had functionality and began to crawl his way off the plateau. He barely made it two feet before a decapitated imp head came rolling down to a stop next to him.

He turned on his side and saw the last survivor hissing and snarling at the creature. It managed to duck and sidestep a few swings. Infuriated and fed up, the beast jumped impossibly high into the air and came crashing down on it.

A shower of demon gore obscured what was left of the human's vision, as the resulting shockwave launched him into the air. His world flipped and turned in on itself as sky and desert merged mercilessly together. His back snapped through what felt like rock and he hit the dirt, skipping off what seemed like an incline. This pattern continued, until gravity finally did its job and grounded him into the slope, carrying his broken body away from the battlefield. Tumbling down with dirt caking into his eyes and setting fire to his wounds, he finally came to a standstill on what felt like plates, scraping over his ribs and peeling off the skin that remained there. He reeled like a worm, his mouth open in silent torment.

Then the bones came crashing down. More dust crumbled over him as the fossils snapped and pounded against his spine mercilessly.

And then everything was still.

. . .

 ** _26 Days Later_**

Nearly a month after First Contact

. . .

His teeth ripped through the last strip of bandaging off his trembling fist. Unwrapped and exposed to the languid torchlight, he saw the wound had pulled itself out of its festering state and had begun to heal. The currents of pain ebbed and flowed along the slash. He gazed mournfully at the remains of his med-kit, contaminated sutures, bandaging, and painkillers from playing medic to the constant scrapes he had accumulated down here. That was it for sterile tools. His wounds would be forced to get better without them.

Groaning, he pulled himself up to the ceiling of his alcove / den / shelter.

With his good hand wiping away the morning sniffles, he stumbled to the chain gun planted dutifully at the entrance to the isolated cave, ready to tear apart any unwanted visitors.

At the time, he couldn't believe his luck, a stash of supplies looted from a dead elite who had used this place as a last stand. What exactly was his fatal mistake had yet to be identified and as long as that loose strand remained, Rienfield would continue to patrol and mark any demonic movements out of the ordinary.

With those salvaged supplies, he used it to fix himself up as best as he could, so he could hunt for food. The stringy ribs of an imp were hung out to dry in racks at the mouth of the cave. It also helped obscure his living scent away from any prying noses. It would just be another carcass in a world full of them.

With gear and tools salvaged from the wreck, Jacob was able to run some code through it, rig up a drone to manage the gun, and program a firing algorithm that forced it defend only when necessary. He wasn't strong enough to carry it by himself in his condition. Just lugging into a better position took the better part of a day to achieve. Despite this, Jacob dutifully kept the weapon oiled and clean to prevent unfortunate jamming although it had never been fired once since it came upon his hands. Rienfield intended to keep it that way.

To kill time, he wrote in an old-fashioned journal, also picked clean off the dismembered remains of the last owner. He tore the pages pertaining to the dead marine off and set it in a forgotten cubby hole, ignoring his temptation to learn the history behind the fallen. Rienfield didn't want to know who the guy left behind. God knows he had.

With his new set of binoculars, he spent his time studying the behavior of demons he could see off in the distance, doodling exaggerated drawings of the different species he had found and listing off unique features. Hell, he would have written _enlarged cock_ in the margin just for the shits and giggles. The journal became more of a bestiary log rather than a personal record for fear of being stricken by his current situation and the starving family he had left behind.

There was no sign that anybody was coming to save him. He couldn't remember the last time he saw a soul in these parts, someone sapient that could have warned him before he committed some potentially devastating mistakes. He was no Martian; some scientist that could live off the soil, but water was the perfect resource to rinse wounds. He was only able to keep himself hydrated by scooping blood from the ponds littered around his hideout. It was akin to eating tofu, an item that never quite satisfies. A purgatory for the senses. As such, his teeth were caked in sour, metallic tasting juices. Bacteria still seemed to be a thing in hell, so he fashioned a bit of wire from his rope and used what little actual water he had scrounged just to serve the purpose of rinsing his teeth.

Rienfield had once heard that in ancient times, some old civilizations used to carve out the hearts of willing participants, still beating, and offered them up to the gods as sacrifices. Some stories say you could gain strength from feasting on the blood of your enemies like Siegfried with the greedy dragon Fafnir. All he felt when he drank was a consistently debilitating nausea.

When the MRE's had dwindled to nothingness, he set out to catch weaker demons using elaborate tricks or simply coming up behind them when they were alone and plunging a knife through their skull. His luck had lasted four kills now to tide him over till next week though he wondered how long he could keep this up or indeed when his luck would run out.

Time was a sketchy concept in hell. There was never a true night per say as the fires raging all over inferno always kept lights shining in his eyes which fucked up his circadian rhythms. He had experienced shuttle lag before, but this was definitively worse.

In his log, the first entry was devoted to the blind behemoth which he had now dubbed the moniker "Hell Knight" on account of the creature saving his life. The others who nearly tore him to shreds, he called _imps_ , because they rarely got along with each other and scampered around like . . . well, imps.

There were others too. Few of them gave quite a fright quite like the shark blobs with teeth. Another species in this world that defied classification, they made one hell of an introduction, namely with a boulder from above. He still saw them from time to time, but it was his first hint that there was some kind of verifiable ecosystem in here. As it turns out, the boulder that had unceremoniously plunged itself down upon him contained the equivalent to grub, little worm-like pests. Far above was a family of the beasties gorging on the cliff face. It quickly became clear that their behavior was more than guided by instinct. When one sibling started edging out the other , the offended retaliated and the two sped off from their brief feast like fighter jets. They playfully nipped at each other's heels with massive rows of fangs, never making contact and clearly held back. It was odd that play was even a concept among hell's inhabitants. Not much room to grow in such a pressure-cooker environment.

These, among other observations were jotted down hastily in his journal while it remained unspoiled. As he scribbled and doodled corrections to his previous drawings, his eyes were soon drawn away to the tripod-mounted binoculars with a growing sense of unease. Sitting cross-legged, he reached for that forgotten journal of the Dead Elite. Some part of him insisted on prying into the parting notes of this guy but his hands betrayed him. He simply folded them in two and tucked it away in the back of the same journal he knew he would never be able to fill. Might as well piggy-back the stories of two doomed explorers for the convenience of posterity.

His eyes scanned the cave wall and he noticed the white marks he etched in the granite to tick off the days that passed by . . . and a thought occurred to him.

Like everything else that hadn't been spoiled in his life, it was his firm belief that any thought of the family he left behind would paralyze him, a fatal mistake. Now . . . Maybe his family weren't the only ones that deserved to grieve.

He wasn't going to avoid it any longer. He flipped to a fresh, clean-cut page, pen hovering expectantly over the imaginary margins. Where his fingers had deftly drawn embellished representations of the creatures that would torment him, the page now flickered blankly in the whistling breeze. His words were frozen

But he soon foregoed a constructive narrative in favor of the non-nonsensical ramblings implicit in a introspection. He began, noting how he had effectively become a survivor, someone lost in an unforgiving environment and little supplies. He took stock of comparisons to his unique situation between those stranded upon high seas, war camps, or plain old jungle, the likes of which were damn near extinct on Earth.

He wondered what would become this place. There was an eons long dynasty entrenched in this world. Could there be any sort of major upheaval in their cultural history? Before he got dropped into this place, he would have snorted in derision. When do demons have a culture? But when he observed a clearly man-made landmark perched a little way across the cliffs, the question certainly started becoming valid.

Jacob didn't know what to make of the advanced architecture he had seen on one of the few excursions out of his safe house. Nothing he observed in the demons exhibited an intelligence to build temples beyond the most effective way to ensnare and dismember their spoils. That would imply a level of logistics and sentimentality that shouldn't exist in these creatures. His theory on some kind of unspoken universal lines of communication remained unproven but highly fitting. The damn things were attracted to the place of worship as waves migrated it to the place seemingly at random, almost as if for Sunday mass. Demons he had never encountered before dropped in to do the equivalent of praying. From the brief look he had got, they seemed to be doing this activity in complete harmony. Gone was the rampant territorial-ism, unprecedented aggression and infighting that set each of them at odds. Only something more powerful could get thugs and brutes to clean up their act if only for a brief time.

 _If that was the case, does this intelligence rule through respect or fear?_

In his journal, he noted down that it must be the latter. After that, he stayed the hell away from it on return trips. Whatever relic that could possibly be tucked away in there was not worth the risk.

He looked out into the vast expanse, the canyons dotting the crimson horizon, the lightning arcing across the floating spires, and the howls of distance tornadoes embroiled in perpetual flame. Despite the sting of ash and decay whipping around his body, he found himself breathing in deeply. Nobody could deny the view. It wasn't pretty but at the very least, consistently awe-inspiring every time he saw it.

His day having been made, Jacob pried off a chunk of imp and chewed it gratefully. He unwrapped the eye-patch bandanna that covered the remains of his optical nerve and returned to his dwelling in a stable, if not comfortable, silence.

At least the VI wasn't making his life a living hell.


	2. Arcane Punishment

_UAC File Prompt . . . scanning_

 _ERROR - Scan/Inconclusive_

 _Contacting Representative . . ._

 _ERROR - Message Pending_

* * *

Below Kadingir Sanctum, somewhere in the Vast Umbral Plains

Coordinates: Unknown - Uncharted Area

Date: _Unknown_

 ** _. . ._**

 **Chapter 2: Arcane Punishment**

 **. . .**

He woke up to ear-splitting gunfire, light flashing in his eyes like thunder. His machine roared, spraying short bursts from the maw of the small cavern. Almost as if in a battle cry, the drone whirred and blared its fury. Jacob instinctively dashed to his feet and pulled the makeshift barricade halfway down the rocky corridor, blocking him in so they couldn't get to him. The cries of imps could barely be heard over the gun slicing them in half like a chainsaw. His handiwork had proven itself. With no sign of a human to sate them, they would eventually give up.

With his bandaged hand clutched tightly on the detonator with grenades rigged to explode in a far but close enough perimeter, he waited, breathless. Breathless in anticipation of the perfect timing, listening to their cues of enraged snarls and pained howls. Not too early that stubbornness will prevail in the demons and not too late as he needed to conserve ammo. When the overwhelming majority sounded off the former, his cracked and soot-ridden thumb slammed into the button. He gritted his teeth and braced for the geological shockwave. The crackle and cloud of sediment enshrouded him, pebbles shooting past his crouched limbs like angry hornets so much so that he prayed to not be buried alive as another muffled crackle in the distance, unlike the explosives, continued in suspense.

An eerie silence fell, not the howls or snarling of surviving stragglers could be heard or of those fleeing their lost cause. His work was so deafening that he didn't notice the casual clicking of the drone as the Gatling reel spooled to a stop. There was a tenuous buzz in his ears as if the miffed membranes were protesting the speedy silence instead of embracing it. He waited for their reconciliation, half an hour, an hour, but things were not the same. The balance had been irrecoverably disturbed. The spurned cliffs above insidiously whispered their displeasure long after their creaking instability had stopped talking.

The detonator tumbled out of his hand as he collapsed with unprecedented exhaustion and quite literally hit the sack. He adjusted it only slightly and then promptly fell into a fitful slumber.

* * *

The next morning, he swept away the festering imp carcasses and shoved the majority of the pieces over the edge, brushing away the morning sniffles with his knuckles. He huffed and brandished his glistening paw.

"Any chance you guys don't happen to like the flu?" He said to no-one in particular. The only response came from the cracks of the demon's broken bodies tumbling on the rocks below.

He chuckled briefly. "Guess not."

Something had changed. Beyond the sensation of playing siesta to the scorpion nest in his mouth, beyond the creaking of his unused jaw like the loose hinges and bolts of a horror-film door, his voice had changed. Hoarse. Weary.

Exactly what his frenetic mind had been experiencing under the cruel, cheerful conditioning of the goddamn computer. There were those days when he couldn't stand the downward spiral of dependence, not only on the drink to submerge him but the family need.

In turn, it made him cruel. Warp his mentality in ways he couldn't imagine from squinting so long at only a piece of the whole picture. In the end, he was gonna die alone in here, and his family would be more likely to ask when's the next welfare check . . . or about the non-existent severance package.

Rienfield paused his lamentations to inspect the gun belt attached to the gun. Still perfectly calibrated for round two. He nodded his head appreciatively, gave the barrel a small pat of affection, and turned away, back into his den, dragging the bloody stick with him.

* * *

As it turns out, his severance package came in the form of divine deliverance. The explosives he detonated the night before had revealed one very familiar blue marker. God knows how it got up there but he wasn't about to complain. He eyed it hungrily through the lenses of his scope, lying flat on his stomach above the secluded cave, pausing only to check briefly behind him in case any of the creatures decided to chomp his ass.

The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, now from barely contained excitement. It could be his ticket back home. He scrambled to his feet, having surveyed the area. Supposedly, no demons in sight. Maybe he could run out and get it?

Whatever he chose to do, Rienfield knew he had to do it fast. The marker would undoubtedly attract lookers from afar in due time or worse yet, it would be trampled in an eventual scuffle.

He dropped himself over the edge behind him and let go, landing smoothly back at the entrance of his den. The lone human appraised the gun at the entrance which chirped and craned towards him inquisitively. IFF still working splendidly. His options having been weighed, he stepped forward and unclasped the locks holding the artillery in place one by one in an almost reverent manner. Soon, the stand clattered limply against the walls of the cave. He was brought momentarily to his knees, groaning underneath the weight of the chain gun. The belt scraped along the cavern floor loudly.

 _How the hell is it possible for someone to lug this around out in the open?_

Mini-gun tucked firmly underneath his armpit and with safety on, Rienfield began the arduous but altogether short trek up the cliff base.

* * *

He stepped away and inspected his work, drying his hopelessly pouring face with a rag. Sweat had built up and soaked through his undershirt at every critical porous spot on his body.

Wiping the salt from his eyes once again, he sat down and looked through his binoculars. Still nothing. This was too good to be true but if he didn't try, he would eventually be killed anyway. His mind was already made up with this simple logic at the forefront.

Now, the chain gun would be covering his escape if he needed to get any pursuers off his back when he dived back into the cave. For extra insurance, the last of the sticky grenades he held back were wrapped around in sweeping waves across the open ground.

He breathed heavily, inspecting the trembling legs pulled up against him.

 _What are you waiting for?_

At that point, he should have considered how pungent his scent was now, amplified by very much alive human sweat. He pulled himself to his feet and breathed in preparation. First, he stretched and warmed up then he inspected the binoculars, then his gear.

 _Oh, come on, just do it already!_

He took a deep breath and patted his knees for reassurance. Obliging his insidious thought pattern, he set out at a loping pace, watching the tops of the cliffs for an ambush. Already halfway, and nothing had come up. The cable scanner indicated no fresh paw prints in the area, probably only a cold trail from the day before. His nervousness spiked as he edged ever closer to the marker, expecting at any second to have his progress beset by hungry demons. Rienfield was upon the marker now, the blue light glowing and bathing his all-black and torn attire in eerie light. He glanced around again, his fear having peaked.

The human seized the marker and flipped his head back up like a meerkat sentry.

 _Really, nothing?_

Jacob made to turn back but stopped abruptly. Climbing up right back from where he had just come from was a murder of imps . . . and their sights were set straight on him.

His heart palpitated painfully against his still bruised ribs, the man watched in silent horror as one of the demons turned its head to inspect the chain gun. One intrepid follower climbed up on it and then promptly slashed the makeshift wiring that had kept the weapon hands free. From afar, he could palpably feel the death whir of **_his_** machine as the barrel listed heavily off to the side.

His good eye turned upwards and whipped around in horror as more crawled out of the woodwork and climbed straight down to him from the cliffs above.

 _Of course, you cheeky bastards._

It wasn't coincidence that brought that marker all the way here. It was to lure him out into the open. A trap, not an ambush. Their behavior would have fascinated him but the firsthand demonstration only made him grit his teeth in anger.

His legs reacted first and then he was off, running for his dear life as they pursued with excited yelps and hisses like a pack of hyenas. Those whoops soon turned to pained screams as limbs blew off when the first wave of explosives detonated.

They bought him time but not enough.

He had no idea where he was going. It was as if the other potential hideouts he had surveyed earlier had disappeared overnight. Where the hell were they?

A brief shadow fell over him before he was sent sprawling by a tackling demon from above. He spun on his heels and breach-kicked the lunging imp square in the gut. The cry it emitted quickly fell out of existence as it toppled over the edge.

Jacob scrambled unsteadily to his feet as a fireball grazed his shoulder. The hiss of his clothes was quickly smothered by the pat-down of his sleeves. He ran the other way and another fireball slashed his calves, its velocity crashing him hard on one knee.

Just like that, he was surrounded, caught in their plan.

 _Screw divine intervention. This is fuckery of the highest caliber!_

He watched as the imps leaped in unison from the cliffs to perform the finishing take down before the earth went belly up. Eyes wide, he fell backwards as the plate he was perched on began careening off the volcanic shelf, the imps missing by a hair's breadth. He scrambled up the platform, kicking away the wayward grasps on his ankles, nails bleeding fire in any attempt to gain purchase. He wrapped his forearm over the edge, dragging his blackened limbs up with him. He leaped to the next platform which buckled instantly, sending him spinning off the edge into a short slope. He spun briefly before flying face-first into a mouthful of ash.

Altogether, the ordeal was very brief but his heart was yammering like a madman. At least this pit was fucking stable. He gave an exasperated groan, hearing the shelf careen into the void. After a minute or two of silence, it became clear that the imps had plunged down with it. The ash caked into his singed flesh, making him bleed white into the narrow passage.

Now, he was back at square one again. No med-kit, no weapons, no hide-out, all gone in the blink of an eye. The marker too was lost in the scuffle, probably sleeping with the fishes for all he knew. Either way, he was fucked.

Every profanity he could think of was spat in the face of his horrid luck.

 _Oh god, I'm going to die here!_

He lacked any fluid to even bring tears to his eyes and without that reinforcing aspect, the emotional turbulence died down somewhat. Even if he could, it would have to be bloody tears. Though there was some sort of unitologist backbone to the UAC, he never found himself buying into the crap about deliverance. The only thing he repented was ever getting the fuck into this situation.

So he rested for as long as he dared. Now, that the status of his wounds had changed to a dull roar, he climbed to his feet in what seemed to be a desert of ash. Like quicksand, the ash filled his shoes immediately as he sunk in with every step.

Practically wading in the sand, his heel repeatedly brushed against suspicious objects. As the ash tumbled down their mighty heaps, a tell-tale glimmer peaked from underneath the muck. He fought frantically against what felt like cement attached to his limbs before he snatched and hugged the marker close to his chest.

"I'm never letting you go again."

With this promise, he soon had climbed up into a complete cluster-fuck. Nothing looked familiar anymore. The ever-shifting tectonic platforms of hell had wiped away all semblance of traction like a vigorously shaken Etch-a-Sketch.

Then as he leaped over a gap in the platforms, he saw something else familiar. The temple tower. He paused in his tracks, dust skidding out from underneath his floppy converse shoes as he recalled the written musings that started burning a hole in his pocket.

 _Does this intelligence rule through respect or fear?_

 _What could possibly be so terrible that it gives demons pause?_

He would be heading straight into the center of it all. As if on cue, a recognizable howl lifted his gaze to the spires. Rienfeild spun around frantically, his eyes roaming every cliff, anything to dissuade from exchanging one grave for another.

The resurgent mob of imps emerging from their scattered search parties forced his hand, and with marker swaddled tightly in his arms, he dashed off into the ancient ruins. They noticed him all too soon and they pursued from the cliffs, swinging and whipping their way through the craggy rock at blazing speeds and the sudden return to testing Terra-Firma made his stride fall into a broken loop.

One after another, his feet descended rapidly down the steps into the previously deserted plaza, so frantically that he feared having an unraveled shoelace to thank for his death. He jumped the rest of the way and broke his fall with a well-timed combat roll. Still, they were catching up to him and those blind behemoths from earlier had reared their ugly heads. They homed in on him from the other direction at a speed that belied their massive size. In the span of a few seconds, they had already flanked him.

His lungs pounded against his chest in protest as he stared down the ominous entrance, impaled corpses and Dragon's Teeth scattered around the hall of demonic idols. A fireball shaved his head and knocked into one of the blackened braziers, the blue flames lapping at the maggot-infested heap lying below which relinquished their tight hold on the eye sockets of a barren skull.

The Knights brushed aside the pillars like it were a simple annoyance in an attempt to seize him as he bobbed and weaved among the ruins, leaping and sliding his way underneath collapsed arches. The guttural grows of his pursuers pervaded every snap and devolution of crumbling architecture . . . and it was getting closer to shaving off the skin of his teeth.

Before his eyes, the massive structure began to shift and rearrange itself from a temple with steeples and pillars into a pyramid.

 _A tomb,_ he realized, _a tomb fit only for a pharaoh, a demonic dynasty._

 _Or me,_ he added darkly.

It was a sight to see like an expert shuffling the world's biggest deck of cards. As the pieces clicked into place, the metallic hull of the pyramid began to hum lowly. A sudden flash of red electricity nearly sent the man sprawling as he ran and ducked at the same time. Awestruck, the pyramid sported a shimmering blood red outline, occasionally flickering like a hologram . . . or an illusion of safety, an oasis.

* * *

 ** _-Supposedly, the pharaohs went to the temples to commune with the gods, to host their consciousness and merge a piece of their souls, all to act as one and rule as decreed by the higher powers that be. Many hosts did not survive.-_**

* * *

The pounding footfalls behind him soon became shrill with how close they were nipping at his heels.

 _Come on . . . just a little farther._

His frayed shoes crossed the threshold of the temple just as one of the blind humanoids lunged at his leg.

Jacob fell hard into obscurity. He turned to face the creature pulling him back and regretted seeing the horde right behind the snarling beast. As he was dragged backward on one limb, his other leg sought purchase in the craggy spaces between the stones of the archaic entrance. His foot caught on an outstretched brick . . . and he instantly regretted doing so.

The Hell Knight yanked again, and it nearly tore his limb out of its socket. The resounding crack of his joints sent him squirming in his brief resistance. Crying out, he pulled his combat knife from its holster on his hip and began slashing vehemently at the vice.

 _What are you willing to sacrifice to live? A limb . . . seemed to be the right price to pay. Isn't that the way famous survival stories go?_

Again and again, every swipe sent blood flying until Rienfield finally impaled the groping arm with his knife, enough to dislodge its grip momentarily. He lunged with all his might back into the recesses of the pyramid. Its rippling tree trunk for an arm groped for him once more but it never felt anything again.

The entrance to the tunnel sealed itself with a resounding bang from above and he was plunged into pitch-black. Instinctively, he spread his arms to grope for the walls and found them dishearteningly close. Hee dawned on his unwitting imprisonment.

Every breath, every exertion echoed in the obscure chamber, preserving his pain in the walls and in the air. The human dragged himself to the stone at his back, pulling his still somewhat intact limb with him. Every attempt to move it caused him great agony until he reminded himself that it happened to be a good sign. At least, it meant the nerves were still attached.

Careening and swaying in his attempt to stand up, he propped his good leg up and painstakingly shimmied his back up the bricked wall, relying entirely on that limb to rise to his feet in the pitch-black darkness. The blue marker clasped tightly between his whitened fingers, he swept it along the walls and trudged forward when he felt something leap and wriggle along his heel. He gave a brief shout in surprise and shook it off, the object hitting the cobwebbed tunnel shaft with a wet _splat!_

Deeply rattled, he hugged the wall briefly and shakily held out his improvised lamp which struggled to even make a dent in the darkness. The vague outline of a severed arm still flopping and clenching apart from its owner met his eyes with disdain where he waited with bated breath for its futile efforts to cease. Though its intended prey was hopelessly out of reach, a sense of apathy began to overshadow him.

 _How fucking pathetic._

No sooner had this thought left hot off the printing press when the lantern beside his head sparked up. Startled, he came to the center of the path as one by one, the ignition ricocheting from wall to wall until the winding corridor had been illuminated, then . . . silence.

 _Whatever being lived down here, it had become aware of his presence._

From an indiscernible distance, another sound made itself known. A soft, plinking noise like water diving into a pond from up high. Or blood.

He was trapped in here, for better or worse. The gate behind him did not budge, it did not even indicate the frustrated wails of those clawing outside nor the tortured howl of a hell knight minus one limb. Just . . . nothing.

With a growing sense of unease, he willed himself to limp forward but found his attention drawn away from the clinging obscurity to the murals on the walls. Though the design seemed Egyptian, the story it told was not. All he was sure of was that there were sacrifices being depicted and what looked like strangely armored humans charging into battle with an army of digitigrade beings in black opposing them. It became a repeating motif as he edged along, like the wall was trying to digest a long-held grudge.

His attention was shattered by the sudden flash at the end where the passage was opening up. The shadowy curtain unveiled what appeared to be some sort of altar or pulpit.

Now unbidden thoughts flew into his mind. It was safe to assume nobody had ever visited the inner sanctums of this place in a long time and yet, everything highlighted the path like it had also been waiting for someone to set foot inside.

Still clutching the marker for his life, he finally came upon the altar. He climbed the short set of steps with some difficulty, his fingertips just barely brushing the edges as insurance. The blue bundle in his arms clashed darkly with the glowing brackets on each side of the altar. He certainly didn't expect the view that lay out before him.

It was a massive vestibule with a killer set of stairs wrapping back around in a pentagram, every tip noting the presence of multiple passages just like the one he emerged from, all of which lead down to the main attraction of this little corner of inferno.

A giant, grinning corpse.

The thing seemed to be collapsing on its back until he noticed the insectile abdomen, its grotesque ribs exposed like an exoskeleton. He frowned briefly before squinted at the distinctly familiar kind of skull. The top half betrayed its lineage and appeared to be a larger version of the Hell-Knight's skull, teeth bared in a perpetual grimace. The lower section resembled a giant gruesome pest. The bottom half of its cracked jaw listed off to the side, mandibles swaying slightly as if from a hangman's noose.

In the center of its empty rib cage was a glowing sphere, floating with Argent Energy wrapped around it. Even from that distance, he could feel the low but shrill hum it emitted.

His first thought was to stay the hell away from it. At least nothing else seemed to be wandering the halls. The temple wasn't much for subtlety what with every minute shuffle and step being amplified and echoed out to the four corners of the pyramid.

Again, more braziers, as if responding to the calls of the living, lit up all around revealing more of the place of worship than he was ready to digest.

In his condition, he would never make it back out to his haven alive. All his remaining chips lay squarely in this room but with no food left to sate him, he would starve if he couldn't figure out the marker in here and it would seem, judging by the varied skeletons strewn about, that there was no conventional escape. On the bright side, the demons wouldn't be chewing him up in the end.

He collapsed among the skulls of the dead, apologizing briefly to the remains. His forearm rested on his arched leg, and in that defensive pose, he suspiciously glared at the corpse. Soon, the lights started winking in and out. His vision blurred and he promptly slumped into the angular embrace of the brick at his back.

* * *

There was that incessant plinking of blood; tolling until the bell had long been run cold, each monotone hand ticking minutely until he awoke in successive, fitful approximations.

For him, Jacob had only momentarily dipped his head in exhaustion but when he awoke four hours later, absolutely nothing had changed. Nothing to indicate the passage of time. The only consolation was that no reanimated riff-raff had decided to leap out at him. The glorified taxidermy below waited dutifully, not a limb a microfiber out of touch.

Feeling only a minor sense of comfort, he fumbled blindly next to him for the blue device nestled into a bony pelvis, unfurled his only remaining tools, crossed his legs and set to work. A cursory glance told him everything he needed to know. The power draw had exhausted the leftover harnessed energy. Previously, it was able to illuminate through the thick of a Martian sandstorm but now, it struggled to even illuminate the ink-black gloom.

Something about the way it pressed down on him, as if the darkness was coveting a lurking predator, made getting closer to the entangled fusion of Argent Energy seem like a better idea. Right now, they were at a stalemate, neither one willing to step foot on the other's territory.

He tried to see what else he could accomplish with the device but with the limited set of tools available, the others of which were probably being wringed and dug through by the imps back at his camp, his eyes were gradually drawn upwards to the grisly skeleton.

 _No, don't you even dare think about it._

Rienfield licked his lips in anticipation and scooped up his charge, leaning onto a empty torch bracket for support.

 _Wasn't Argent Energy the perfect power source they all were seeking to harness?_

Jacob felt somewhat deflated when he remembered the words of the bare-as-bones instructor at orientation. Only a complex filtering and pipeline system was able to refine or more importantly, contain, the energy for safe packaging to Earth. He doubted he would find proprietary, highly-classified equipment lying around in Hell.

Heedlessly, he approached the still reeling corpse when that resounding echo started up again. The _plink_ of blood coincided with his last footstep. He paused at the source and crouched, extending a cautious finger to wipe away the drizzle of fat blood droplets, studying his index finger. It was only when he was up close that he could take in the enormity of this fallen beast.

Glistening tissue and blood adorned its bones. No sign of decomposition or rot as if the creature had simply curled up and expired. If it came down to it, he could dine on the blood and meat of the corpse. He ran his tongue experimentally down the path of his index finger to the waiting droplet of blood.

Paranoia stopped him in his tracks. Jacob peered upwards and reminded himself of the amount of varied remains that were strewn across the winding vestibule, a startlingly significant proportion looking as if they died crawling away from something. If some of them had been driven to starvation, there could be something poisoning the well. Surely, he wasn't the only living being, human or demon, that had the same idea. That left one option.

In disgust, he vigorously wiped away the blood on his pant leg and took a deep breath. He rose to his feet carefully and contemplated the glowing sphere that didn't belong. If he could just extract a little bit of its power, they'd be golden.

Wiping away the crimson liquid on his pant leg, he set the device farther away just in case and began fashioning a makeshift pair of tongs with a bundle of cloth wrapped around the handle to dampen the potential surge. It certainly wasn't ideal though. Even the toughest of synthetic insulators had trouble handling the surge.

Desperate times call for desperate actions.

 _Either way, I'd die._

He clanged the tongs together experimentally and scooped up the semi-cylindrical device in its lobster claws. When it came to mortally dangerous situations, his body tended to not like doing a lot of things. Playing chemist with an alien corpse's energy source was one of them.

"Now, let's crack you open, shall we?"

With the ubiquitous count to three frozen on his lips, he reached out and plunged the tip through its first band of energy . . . and was promptly rejected. Thrown on his ass, he climbed back up to his feet as the tongs shattered against the stairs.

A massive wave sent him stumbling and nearly cracking his head against the steps too. Ice began to cloud his neck when a tortured scream echoed around the vestibule. He whipped around, squinting for the source. Mouth open wide and with glowing eyes, he barely saw the floating mask-like demon dive-bombing his position.

Rienfield had enough sense to jump out of the way but many hours of observation did not help him deal with the fact that it was a natural suicide bomber. The resulting explosion at his feet sent him flying into the air until his spine slammed onto the sacred corpse.

His world went white as his body hung limply, draped over the insectoid creature like clothes hung out to dry. With only a slight moan, he fell backwards and came crashing down onto pure Argent Energy.

The first thing he suddenly became aware of was the pain that shot through his body like adrenaline. He was on fire. In howling panic, Rienfield extracted his clothes and patted himself down harshly, but the flames were all around him now. Jesus, it felt like his skin was melting.

He rolled back and forth in the heap of blood created by the seemingly frozen mid-death beast. It came partly from agony, partly from training to smother and extinguish the flame. But he was never the source of the bonfire.

Unbidden, images, data all flooded into his mind, thoughts he couldn't suppress as if a virus was worming its way through to his mind. Like a movie reel, the horrors of hell flashed through his milky eyes, moving rapidly as if in a rapidly deteriorating film reel. He saw the insecticidal creature when it was alive, carving rows through the hordes as it shrieked, its wings thrumming like a hummingbird. Vast chambers and sky-scraping Titans locked in combat, terraforming through the land with only its massive footfalls. The blood spilled from each strike coalesced into new landmasses. They did what took millennia for volcanoes to accomplish.

 _No, it wasn't the Earth that was created in seven days. It was Hell!_

Another surge of power sent him reeling. Desperately, he tried to pull himself up using the exposed ribs protruding from the bowels of the creature. As his hand latched onto ancient bone, he found himself unable to distinguish between his appendage and the surface it was wrapped tightly around.

The man watched in horror as the last vestiges of flesh dissipated away from his hands and fell to the ground in a festering pulp. The fact that he was still able to move them did not sate his terror. They came back to scrabble against his chest in a desperate bid to rid himself of the sensation of insects rattling underneath his skin. Wherever he touched, the hive seemingly dissolved his skin into rolling heaps of gore which fell like meteors upon the floor with increasingly wet sounding splats until he couldn't distinguish between the festering torso of the beast and what was once his body as he knew it.

Peeling and shedding skin like an insect extricating itself from its previous carapace, the muscle tissue underneath bare to the elements, he thought, _hoped,_ that this was a dream, or at the very least, fall dead like he was supposed to.

Somehow, he was being kept alive and somewhat in control of his mental faculties. It couldn't be possession. He would be a mindless drone by now. Whatever this was, it had to be much worse because he was conscious for _all_ of it.

A palpable crunch interrupted the pained gnashing of his teeth, and then he felt his nose tumble off to join the rest of the heap. Then his vision turned hazy until there was nothing but the darkness he was plunged into. Slick pulp began to dribble down the hollow of his nose and pool on his chin. He vehemently spat the stringy nerve fibers that had inadvertently made their way into his mouth like parasites. In his utter horror, he frantically wiped away what could only be the dissolved remains of his only reliable connection to the outside world. A sudden draft indicated that now his eye sockets were completely hollow.

Then his bones started warping and the crackle reminded him of his bunk-mate opening a smuggled bag of chips none too surreptitiously in the middle of night. He was thrust back to his knees and just like a toy being treated cruelly, the force of each resounding crack sent him crawling.

He tried to scream, do anything except internalize his terror and agony. No such catharsis came. It was as if his vocal cords had dissolved away along with the rest.

The braziers blew lazily, silent spectators of the phenomenon, flickering to the echoes of each snap and gurgle the lone lifeform inside suffered.

Coughing and hacking, he spat out both rows of teeth and gums like an old man's cheap prosthetic. The only warning for what happened next was the worryingly drawn out creak and tremble of his mouth. Then he felt his jaw dislodge. The last forceful cough sent the lower half of his mandible swinging open on a single hinge. He fumbled to keep it in place but like china, it too snapped and skittered away.

His exposed musculature limited as it was by the standards of others, began to wrap itself around with more sinewy tissue, hardening like the work of a brick-laying mason. The same shimmer around the pyramid, of Argent Energy, surged the flesh, bulking up the tissue through a series of webbing on fast-forward. Layer after layer closed the gaps left by his internal organs. Knitting and criss-crossing the fibrous strands was the weaving of bone. There was something odd about how flexible it was.

No, not bone. It was cartilage flaring out from his musculature like the ruffled feathers of a bird.

Though half his face was now missing, it seemed as if something was growing to replace it. Bit by bit, his jaw was reformed in a hollow shell except where he thought it was going to end and curve upwards, it continued, stretching out a foot in front of his face. Steam began to rise from the abyssal nostrils lining his skeletal snout. Gradually, he began to taste the salty tang of _his_ blood with perfect clarity, the dizzying cocktail of adrenaline from the fear lying in its stream and the imp dinner he had gorged on last night. The taste quickly went rancid upon his now long and forked tongue.

Fear. It tasted like raw liver.

His powerful jaw hung open as smatterings of fanged teeth began to push outwards from his newly reformed gum sockets. His tongue vigorously scratched upon what felt like rows of serrated teeth and hooks lining the inside while the ones taking root up front were numerous and familiar flat teeth for grinding . . . just like a dog.

Gradually, he heard something very close to him shrieking in torment but it didn't sound human . . . until he realized that monstrously deep howl of agony came from within himself.

A palpable, wet sounding slap hit the inside of his eye sockets which he tentatively brushed against with the bony ridge of his index finger. It was something slimy, and judging by the way he recoiled in pain, a new set of ocular organs.

Blood erupted from the top of his head, falling down his bare flanks and down his snout in inky tendrils, flowing through the aqueducts created by his strands of musculature. His hearing had been indeterminately deafened by the exhausting strength of keeping his quavering limbs half-upright, teeth clenched so tightly and the veins in his neck throbbing with a questionable reserve of blood. He thought it was the plasma draining out of his head, whatever was left of it, but he began to discern the subtle vacuum of the stream lying at his feet. The source: his own heap of flesh, shed like a callous butcher piling up undesired parts. Blood lapped at his bladed knees which failed to even stem the growing tide coalescing from his filmy entrails. It was the glimpse of his reflection on the sheen of the crimson mirror that caught his full attention.

What he saw made no sense.

Rough, ebony horns were curving and twisting upwards like a corkscrew on his scalp-less skull . . . the inhuman shine of his bugged-out, frantic yellow eyes shimmering over liquid crimson.

The transformation finally came full circle. What had, for the most part, been initially neglected by the purview of his conversion, his skeletal fingers began to receive due intention. The shell of bone was quickly adorned with strands of muscle like the multilayered grip of an octopus tightening around its prey. The return to remarkably human hands baffled him until he noticed the columns and rows of blackened slits dotting his forearms and where his knuckles should be. As if on cue, a stampede of odd bumps traveled down the breadth of his tense limbs in the blink of an unbelieving eye. The darkened strands began to part, dilating slightly in response to the mass migration. Peeking curiously out from beneath the flesh, and coolly returning his paralyzed gaze, were rows upon rows of beady little green orbs. It was only when the green orbs briefly vanished in wave-like unison that he realized that the orbs were _blinking_ up at him, arranged as the clearest possible analogue to arachnids. Without rhyme or reason, the entire colony of demonic critters ducked beneath the cover of his tissue.

Had Rienfield somehow been standing, he would have collapsed like a rigid springboard in a faint.

Jacob glanced upwards, bile coating the rim of his mandibular while he clutched his pulsating, gored ribs. The blue marker quaked like an old alarm clock through a contrasting tinge of crimson, the surge of Argent energy racing through his body. The glow it emitted now was so bright that he was blinded.

Raising darkened hands to shield from the shine, the marker hummed louder until it shattered against the steps and the gaping maw of a portal opened. Instantly, the man-turned-creature was devoured, and he fell back into oblivion.

* * *

 **End of Final Day**


	3. Ridicule

**End of Final Day**

 **. . .**

 _Chapter 3: Ridicule_

 **. . .**

Jacob Rienfield woke to a stiff, morning cup of déjà vu.

Slowly, his fingers flexed tentatively and closed upon red sand, falling into familiar heaps of powder. A breeze kicked up over him, indicating his state of nudity, more evidence of his state of inebriation. He lacked the energy to even ponder what sand was doing in his dorm room.

Then he heard tentative footsteps, sifting the dirt as it reverberated through his entire body.

"What the hell happened here?"

The voice was female though it sounded odd, coming from a respirator. Oh great, it was the bunk-master coming for morning rounds. Did the place smell that bad?

"Come on, Shepard. We need to get moving."

The other voice was farther away but with the acuteness of his drunken and exacerbated hearing, Jacob could hear what sounded like a buzz following each syllable.

"This corpse doesn't look like any of the others. Guy looks like he was burned alive a few seconds ago." Her tone dropped an octave as it lowered into the realm of hard-boiled detective's musings. "Why bother killing someone if they're already lost to frostbite or asphyxiation? Doesn't make any sense."

There was a swift kick to his kidneys. He bucked but did not shout, doubting his voice would patiently hold the hand's of his elderly brain. It was a dull feeling in his gut and nothing more, not enough to catch the attention of his wayward brain.

"Hey Garrus . . . get over here!"

Oh great, she was bringing in another warden. More footfalls crunched the dirt, faster and rhythmic. The sand was everywhere. He must have been the only remaining casualty of the colony block's little mutiny.

 _Hmph, Party animals._

"What's a turian doing all the way out here? I thought the Mars archives were human-run. You don't suppose it would be too much to hope Cerberus are desperate enough to hire alien contractors again?"

His brow shifted, sifting the dirt into a calming sound of powder, getting the distinct impression this wasn't the bunk-master knocking.

 _Cerberus? Mars Archives? There was no such thing._

"Uh, Shepard. It isn't one of mines."

The male voice didn't sound human and it was almost demonic in its thrumming, a palpable buzz behind every word.

"What do you mean by, 'it'?"

A giant boot was planted on his side and before he could protest, was pushed onto his back.

He had a brief view of orange sky before small arms jostled to the ready and the barrel of one was thrust against his forehead.

"Whoa! Hey, what gives? I'm . . . ." He paused and tried to frown, but found his face unusually unresponsive.

 _What the hell is wrong with my voice? Did I just chain-smoke the equivalent of a life-times worth?_

If anything, the barrel pressed harder against him.

"Reaper thralls that can talk? Shepard, permission to put this thing out of its misery?"

Panic made him blurt out the first logical thing on his mind.

"It's Jacob! My name is Jacob Marcelus Rienfield. Ident badge 2567-Alpha-Echo-Zulu. I work for the UAC. Please, there must be some mistake!"

Internally, he knew he was terrified and confused but the voice that spoke for him boomed it out as if snarls, grunts, and growls had become its very own language. Yet the residue of the voice he remembered had adopted the hoarseness of a hermit trying to claw his way to the surface.

Audibly, the trigger clicked slightly, and the cylinder began to shift in threatening approximations. Once the cycle completed, well . . . he knew enough about guns to understand what would happen next.

"Wait! Stand down, Garrus," called the female from earlier. The boot and more importantly, the gun were pried off his gut and forehead respectively. He grunted and sat up as his hazy view came in and out of focus.

He titled his head quizzically from side to side, his eyes crossed. _Did someone stick a cone to my face?_

Jacob's gaze was lowered down to his gut, half-expecting to see the remains of reverse sex beer navel-guzzling. Instead, he was assailed with the view of exposed muscle and rib cage still smoldering with nothing to conceal his still mildly intact nudity.

"Oh, fuck!" Steam was beginning to rise heavily from in front of him . . . a snout, wasn't it?

"Oh god! No, please. I can't be . . ."

 _Dead? Alive? Inhuman?_ A multitude of ways to fill in the blanks and nothing he could croak out.

"Mirror. I need a mirror!"

A hand shot out to seize him by the shoulder. His gaze zeroed in on a helmeted form, emerald eyes glinting from behind the visor.

"Get ahold of yourself! I'm gonna need you to answer a few questions."

He latched on to the voice. The most familiar figure in this strange new world. Rienfield, in a panic, thrust himself into an embrace with the armored human, seizing her by the forearms, nearly wrapping her in a cocoon.

"Please! You have to believe me! I don't know what I . . ."

The last of his words were cut short when the other figure opened fire on him, striking him back into the dirt in a shower of white.

"No! Garrus! What the hell are you doing? I needed him alive!"

"The thing was attacking you! I only had one option!"

"Disobeying a commanding officer? Maybe loyalty doesn't count for shit when the Reapers strike, but I need to make absolutely sure that when I command my team to stand down, you won't potentially destroy the weapon that fucking kills the Reapers! "

Rienfield groaned in the midst of this domestic spat which was shaping up to be two storm fronts colliding into a vortex. He worked his still reeling jaw until it popped back into place, massaging the result with tentative fingers. No give. Bone. All bone. What was going on? The pain had mysteriously gone and in response to the physical trauma, the edge of his vision shined red, Argent Energy flaring around his skull like a Halo.

"Have those fucking mercs changed your disposition so drastically that executing the scared and helpless seems to be the next best option? Jesus, I thought you were the freaking cop. That, right there," she pointed to the prone corpse lying on the dunes, "was scared civilian 101."

She continued, her voice laced with disgust. "With our history, I thought you would have learned something from me." Her body language was positively livid. She enunciated every following word as if hacking off the ends of syllables with a hatchet.

"There is always another damn option!"

The being called Garrus padded forward, stabbing a claw at himself.

"I know enough to see that thing can't possibly help us in any manner!"

"You were wrong about Legion and our former enemy was invaluable to our mission."

"It's not the same thing as picking up strays, and you know it!" An angry flutter behind the words. _Could be my imagination. Maybe it's just a really odd lisp._

The woman, Shepard, marched over and got in his face, cocking her head with intense and dangerous scrutiny. "You got a problem with the way I run my ship, Vakarian?"

When no answer was immediately forthcoming, she continued, stepping back a bit. "You're probably feeling your talent is being wasted out here. I know leaving Palaven at its most dire hour isn't easy. I had to flee Earth to give the home world its best chance. If you want to return to Palaven and with your special task force, tell me. All I'm asking for is a bit of fucking communication before shit like this happens!"

Dazed, Rienfield sat up at the mention of Earth. What was wrong with the homeworld? Was his family safe?

"Uh, Shepard?"

"I'm done with the political bullshit and the doubt. I served my time. Question me one more time and you'll be warming the bench until your lead ass grows sores!"

"Shepard . . ." The other helmeted figure raised his rifle slightly in a warning tone.

"Jesus fucking Christ, what now?"

"Behind you!" Was all he said before pushing past her, rifle raised.

Rienfield managed to get a better look at the figure behind the scope of his sniper rifle. He was fully armored with some expensive-looking hardware but even with that bulk, something was very wrong with its bone structure. The hips were too wide and something was poking out of its legs from either side. There were only three long fingers clutching the barrel and the helmet was different too. Instead of a horizontal visor like the women's, it was capital Y in shape with some pointed compartment sticking out the back.

"That isn't possible. What are you?" He spoke dangerously in hushed tones.

Rienfield frowned and saw as glinting bronze capsules popped off his snout and clinked to the ground. The crushed ends of three shaved pellets.

The women butted against his rifle and knocked the armored being aside, stealing his weapon and holstering it behind her in a single move.

"Oh no, mister. You and your itchy trigger finger are on time-out."

"We've still got a mission to do!" The wiry one protested.

"Yeah, _I_ do. Have Steve Cortez get a shuttle down here. I want you to escort Rainfield back to the ship. Have Dr. Chakwas keep him under observation. Interrogate him if you want but when I come back, I better see the specimen intact. Anything goes wrong on the ship, I'll hold you responsible for not following the necessary protection protocol."

"It's Rienfield," the observer muttered. The two shared a momentary look of mutual annoyance before the mystery man turned back.

"Wait, you can't honestly expect me to . . . leave you . . . _annnnnd_ she's gone."

The human soldier had vanished over the red dune. After a brief shake of his head, the other, Garrus Vakarian he recalled, zeroed in on him.

"You've heard her. I get your intelligence may be somewhat intact, so I trust that you know what I have to do. For your sake, please don't make my job difficult."

Jacob nodded and then frowned at the way his bony jaw dipped and rose along with it.

"What happened to Earth?"

"It's best if I'm the one that asks the questions in this relationship."

He wanted to narrow his gaze, follow all that habits that had become part of him, but he couldn't. Only a small snort indicated his disdain. "Hey, I'm just as confused as you are, possibly even more."

"Yeah?" He snarled. "Prove it."

Rienfield looked out into the Martian skyline, darkening in the throes of an impending battering ram of hurricane force gusts and all he could think of was how much he missed the view from his quaint little cave back in Hell. It seemed so far away now but something had come back with him through the portal. Unfortunately, it was humanity he left behind in its place, lying in pools of gore back in that chamber.

He voiced a thought, an inkling of something that had begun to dawn on him. "What day is it?"

"It's . . ." the figure mumbled something that sounded alien.

He shook his head, dreading to confront his prediction straight on.

"What year?"

The figure did a double take.

"According to your years, 2187."

His jaw slackened, revealing all the shiny new tools lining his maw.

"It's been thirty-two years?"

The soldier shifted uncomfortably and just when Rienfield thought he would elaborate, he raised his forearm and a device lit up along it in golden tones.

"Cortez, you copy? We need a shuttle down here at my position." A pause.

"No, not yet. Shepard went ahead. Reluctantly, I had to stay behind but we found something else. It seems we've got new players on the field."

Another pause. Rienfield did his best to glare daggers at the way the thing insisted on referring to him impersonally. He could easily say the same thing about him.

Gradually, he got back onto his clawed feet shakily. Something wasn't right. For a few seconds, he lost sight of the armed grunt until he looked down. Reinfield towered over him by two feet. Either the guy was a gremlin in disguise or he had a growth spurt from his usual height of 5'9".

His visor flicked away as he subtly, preferring to proceed with his communication.

"Oh, You're going to see for yourself soon enough. And bring some clothes, the biggest size you can find. Alright, Vakarian out."

The device powered off and the soldier quickly back-pedaled to get out of his shadow. Oddly, the alien settled against the red dune, his knees drawn up as best as could to his face as they were unnaturally bowed and sticking out from the calf like a dog.

"So what do we do now?" The behemoth rumbled.

For a moment, his watcher didn't answer preferring instead to pull the rack of his rifle, snap the barrel back into place, and realign the strange ammunition it had, for the sake of intimidation.

"Now? Now we wait."

* * *

"Jesus Christ! You weren't kidding. What is he?" A buzz-shaven, dark-skinned, thankfully human man with oddly sharp blue eyes looked him up and down, craning his neck from inside the cockpit of the shuttle.

The demon in question seemed lost in contemplation, his claws tentatively running against the side of the shuttle and inspecting it, forced to bow down as he was.

"I haven't asked yet. Just give it the damn clothes." The escort grumbled, grunting as the shuttle doors slammed shut and found himself promptly wishing it hadn't.

"Spirits." The being grunted. "Smells like fried Rachni in here."

After wrapping a size XXL T-shirt from someone called James Vega around his waist, he sat down and watched as the faceless figure pressed a button underneath his helmet and pried off his rapidly collapsing helmet.

Rienfield was taken aback. No, it couldn't be.

"You . . ." He didn't finish the sentence as he reached for a journal that didn't exist anymore. No proof that Hell had ever claimed him for all that time nor indeed spat him back out as a living corpse. It was incinerated along with his humanity.

"With that face of yours . . . you truly have no idea what I am, do you . . .?"

The alien's eyes narrowed in their leathery pits. "What in Buratrum is that supposed to mean?"

"You're not human. The only non-human intelligence the UAC ever studied were demons. Beings from another dimension, ancient, powerful creatures."

"Cortez. What is he going on about?"

"Uh, I'm not sure. If you're asking me what a demon is, they're a bad presence. Some of them could possess people and act through their hosts, turn us into puppets if you believe the Exorcist vids. They were referred to in religious texts back on my world, but their presence was always inferred. They were the opposite of God who is supposedly wise and benevolent."

There was an apprehensiveness to the shuttle pilot.

"And . . . um, I think he was implying that you are a demon."

A pregnant pause followed. Rienfield wanted to elaborate but the words got stuck in his throat. All the recollection did was make him restless to get back into civilization, figure out what the fuck was going on but it seemed he wouldn't be going anywhere.

Jesus, 32 years? Little Helena would be four years older than he is now. Pierce, probably 50. Enough time to start delving into a mid-life crisis. He never got to see them fucking grow up. His mother was probably dead, the supposed miracles of modern medicine having failed her. Failed her lungs.

All that work. All that toil. All that heartbreak of leaving them behind. For what? Some part of him had hoped that once he got out of that dark place in Inferno, he would quit his lowly position at the UAC and get the first shuttle off Mars. He would return to Earth, accept whatever meager unskilled labor came his way but never be far away from his family ever again.

Now it looked like he was all alone.

Rienfield blinked, feeling the telltale itch of tears falling down his bony maw.

He wiped them away instinctively to avoid being stricken by that hole of despair, stilling the trembling of his squared shoulders with a fist; force his problems into submission like with the rest of his miserable existence to date.

Jacob looked up to the monochrome ceiling as if it held all the answers. He swallowed with a pained groan like he was about to vomit. The pressure he was exerting on the toy bench had begun to dent the metal but the more interesting detail he found was the red smudges crossing his marbled hand.

And a trail of bloody tears still pouring down his snout.

"Fuck me." Was all he said as he reached for the bundle of clothes still lying in a heap next to him, dabbing away at his raptor-like maw with the sleeve of a uniform. That sadness quickly turned to anger. Anger that his tears were being observed, that they somehow didn't belong to him anymore.

Garrus steeled his jaw in the silence and sighed.

"It isn't my priority to begin to understand this new development. I'll leave up that to the good doctor. My priority is Shepard. If I can't be there with her in person, at least I can be there watching on her shoulders."

Nobody negated that sentiment. Another looming silence began to stretch out before them until the pilot couldn't stand it anymore and hailed the ship, what he called the Normandy. Intriguing name.

Loudly, the communication was cut off after a few curt lines of dialogue and Cortez poked out his head out again from the cockpit.

"We're going to be arriving soon. You want to knock the pilot down a few pegs, give him a heads up?"

"Yeah . . ." the alien said hesitantly before beginning to pry off his armor piece by piece.

"Mic's yours."

There was a faint crackle over the shuttle's loudspeaker.

"Hey Garrus, gotta ask. For the life of me, I can't figure out why you turned tail and decided to sit this one out. I thought you and Shepard were conjoined at the hip or something."

Rienfield wholeheartedly expected the plated humanoid to not take kindly to the implied cowardice. Vakarian's chest plate popped off with a loud slam as he fiddled with the straps of his under suit.

"You're all heart, Joker. We just got into a bit of a disagreement, that's all."

"What was it about then? Did it somehow end up with you guys conveniently . . . I don't know, tumbling down a hill together?"

The alien scowled as he pried off his gauntlets and greaves.

"That's enough. Even if that did happen, what makes you think I'll tell you?"

The pilot gave an exasperated and slightly-miffed sigh.

"I know I'm supposed to be some hardened soldier by now but that shit still hurt's. Still not your confidante, eh? Maybe that's because **_I don't kiss as well_**." Joker failed to stifle his laughter by the end, the last words trailing off in a shaky wheeze.

Garuss huffed and shook his head. "Okay, I'm going to assume from now on that EDI is just filling you in on all the ship chatter. Anyways, on to more _pertinent_ issues. I've got a new assignment now. Came here to escort something we stumbled across."

Rienfield could just picture Joker on the edge of some seat, mock contemplation upholding his chin and digging a foundation into his thighs.

"Oooh, is it Skittles? Alliance has been stingy with the requisitions lately. I had to swat one of the orderlies hands off so they wouldn't confiscate the leather chair. Really, it's not like anybody is dying for cushions and Skittles."

"Except you, Joker."

"Oh, aye. I just wish we could get some proper motivational material. You know, you can only live on the dew of a ginkgo leaf and Shepard's holy gospel for so long."

The alien obviously couldn't help it. A wide grin split his mandibles from his jaw, a curious scar marring the tattoo and metallic layer to one of them.

Rienfield began to see why the pilot had been nicknamed Joker. As Jacob observed the banter between the two, he couldn't help but feel as if he was intruding in a familial moment. They must have known each other well enough to be ragging between them good naturedly.

"Nah, skittles still happen to be off the table, whatever that is. It's more like someone we're transporting."

"Hmmm, the plot thickens. Is it a scared civilian, a lost and confused schoolgirl? Spill."

"Wrong again on both counts. Secondly, when have we ever brought up fresh civilians to the Normandy?"

"Yeah, you're right. They'd think we're conducting an alien abduction. Any refugee we find would rather throw themselves back at Cerberus or the Reapers as soon as they catch wind of your ghastly mug."

Garrus chuckled as he buffed his bizarre, scaly exoskeleton with oiled black sandpaper.

"Oh, really. I'm sure it's you who looks like the freak to them."

"Ouch. Thought turians were above biting."

A pause.

"Yeah, I thought an apology was too much to ask. You know, mother always told me Turians were too proud for their own good," he left a little bit dangling there with mock wistfulness, a telling falsetto tinging his words.

"So what are we talking about here? Merc, assassin . . . monk? You know, the _usual_ suspects," the pilot added sarcastically.

"Nope. Think bigger."

"Hmmmm, Javik? No way, you managed to get _another_ relic to join the fight?"

"I'm not sure about that yet and not exactly. I'm talking even larger than Javik."

"Okay, you got me. Just tell me who the femme fatale is."

"Oh, I don't think you want to be flirting with this one," the turian drawled, glad to bring some levity to the table . . . and then his derisive gaze settled pointedly on the converted demon.

"It's a face only a mother would love."

* * *

For the first time in his life, Rienfield knew the meaning of shame and humiliation.

Hand-cuffed, muzzled with a wire coat hanger of all things, and forced to bow down so he wouldn't scrape the airlock, an armed escort of five accompanied him through the airlock.

Behind him in the cockpit, the audible creak of a swiveling chair indicated the aghast expression probably worn by the minimally-briefed pilot of the Normandy. When he tried a glance to put a face to the name, one of the guards butted him harshly with his rifle and barked, "eyes forward!"

It seemed to be a common theme around here. Mouths agape, navigators, correspondence specialists, jaws all dropping like loose curtains. Those with coffee promptly choked and ran to stay out of the way of the walking behemoth. They plastered themselves to the monochrome walls or found themselves tripping over their consoles. It was the worst kind of chaotic silence, all staring at him as if their worst nightmares had come alive and grown a pair of legs.

He didn't understand. He couldn't resolve this conflict of cognition that had constantly assailed him since his head was stuck beneath the Martian surface.

In heart and mind, he remained Jacob Marcelus Rienfield. Lowly engineer to a stereotypical mega-corp, with all the accompanying guilt and added baggage of feeding a family.

However, the looks of revulsion were directed towards the very thing he was not. The casualty of messing with stuff he had no business dealing with. Now it looked like he was being thrust into a similar position again.

Somehow, during the few steps leading out of the corridor and into the wide expanse of the CIC, the cloth tied around his sinewy waist slipped off. Stricken by the new development, he froze mid-step as groans of revulsion echoed around him.

The guard from earlier looked away and that easily could have been a mistake Jacob could have exploited. Snatch the gun and run. It had already been proven that he can take a few shots without missing a beat. He could find someplace to hole up and defend it until they gave him what he wanted. Answers and a way to contact his family.

The chance had slipped past and even upon massive claws, he found himself careening to stay on his feet as the other guards pushed him by the small of his back in unison. They continued to escort him down the left side of the communications table and the poor candidates that bet on that area folded like contortionists to duck out of the way.

Garrus turned back to the cadets and barked in admonishment.

"Get back to work! Your commander needs your eyes and ears glued to the mission at hand and while she's gone, it'll be up to me to discipline the lot of you who . . . take fucking snapshots, PRIVATE WAINSWORTH!" The turian boomed.

The marine in question fumbled with the controls to the device perched on his forearm in an attempt to hide it behind his back then did a clumsy salute with his right hand.

"Sir, yes, sir."

Garrus shook his head, knowing more important things were at hand.

Rienfield, however, found it much less easier to let it slide. The meager coat hanger binding his snout popped off and before it could even hit the ground, a booming laughter burst out of him, sending even the most seasoned on end.

The guards butted him around the corner with their rifles just as the hatch beside them opened.

In the little medbay alcove, an awful screech echoed out, sparks racing past his field of view. Rienfield bowed even lower, frowning because his head should have been nowhere near it.

The armed audience raised their gaze to the twin trails of sheared metal zigzagging from the doorway to a torn bulkhead.

"Now that's something you don't see every day," an aged, female voice breathed. Rienfield drew his gaze away from the mark and craned his head to look down on the speaker, a woman with greying hair in a sterile lab uniform. He tried an apologetic smile but ended up simply baring his rows of serrated teeth and fangs threateningly.

A deeply refreshing air of professionalism quickly locked into place and she began instructing the guards to guide him to one of the largest cots they had.

"Set him down here." The doctor said, seemingly out of habit. The guards shifted uncomfortably as they looked the quarry up and down pointedly.

The doctor rolled her eyes and huffed in admonishment, smoothly maneuvering around the cot.

"Alright, John Doe. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

Rienfield glanced around for the subject of the query until he settled upon the expectant gaze of the doctor.

"Who, me?" He grunted lowly.

A brief pause as she considered the fact that he didn't require the use of a translator to speak human English. The pause made him uncomfortable, so he elaborated.

"The name's Rienfield, ma'am. No need to call me John Doe." He tried to speak with the utmost politeness he could muster but the final product was a slightly miffed-sounding rumble.

"Well, Rienfield. Can you get on the cot, so we can have a look at you? The scanners say you're clear, but I need to see for myself that there are no other contaminants that could endanger the safety of this ship."

The doctor silently nodded to the guards to stand down.

"Of course, ma'am." Jacob responded quickly, hoping to build bridges with as much personnel as possible to compensate for the nagging thought of murdering his way through being the next simplest option. Though his eagerness was reproached only by his nudity.

With a brief bout of hesitation, he swung up onto the hospital bed. His clawed toes wiggled experimentally, seeing that his ankle was sticking off the ends at an odd angle. Digitigrade legs highlighted how tightly bound his sinewy muscle was with every flex.

"Stand guard at the entrance. I want a rotating detail covering this spot 24 hours until such time we deem that there is no threat. You know the drill by now." Garrus added the last part softly which seemed to amplify the curious buzz behind his words.

"Dr. Chakwas, you run your tests in the meantime, find out what this thing is but I'm gonna need to interrogate it later. In the meantime, I'll check out if it's story is accurate for now."

The turian turned to the patient and flared his mandibles, revealing all his teeth in a threatening display.

"It'd be in your best interests to speak truthfully."

 _Well, two can play at this game._

"Or what? You're going to frisk me, cop? I'd like to see you try." He snarled, making sure to raise his jaw to show the raw power within that could probably tear limbs clean off. The little detail he forget about was that they were all coated in fresh blood - his blood but nonetheless infinitely more threatening than he intended.

"Easy. I've killed bigger things than you. My Widow will tear you apart."

Anger bubbled and frothed just below the boiling point. He could wipe the smug look off that demon.

"We're more alike than you think, Vakarian." He wanted to unsettle him by showing that he did not relinquish that one mention of name from his mind and it seemed to have the desired effect.

"You crawled out of that bottomless pit, just like me. Only, I know which one of us is faking to belong."

Instead of meeting his challenge, the turian crossed eyes with the doctor, and promptly turned on his heel and left. She sighed in the now mercifully quiet medbay and wheeled around to retrieve a few items.

"Drama, drama, drama . . ." she chuckled, wrapping a stethoscope over her shoulders like a travel comforter. "I don't think the Normandy can live without it. Can't say we're better off with it though."

Despite the air of levity, she was trying to give off, her hands were trembling slightly. With his piss-yellow demonic orbs, he could see the interconnected web of veins rushing hot to her palms, precise fingers flexing in an almost bracing away.

Then Chakwas pulled out a pair of scalpels and what she said next was eerily familiar to the demon.

"Now, let's crack you open, shall we?"

. . .

 **A/N: This happens to be single-hardest chapter to write so far. Not because of trying to live up to a scene I've thought about for some time but the fact that a lot of potentially smelly wounds might open up here. Everything here sets a precedent for the rest so there have been a lot of issues I've been debating in my head. So far, I think this is the best version I could come up with for the direction I want to take it.**


	4. Laid Bare

**. . .**

 **Chapter 4: Laid Bare**

 **. . .**

"His story checks out."

The turian blinked, his knuckles leaning over the console side-by-side with the dark-skinned intelligence officer, intent faces glowing from the warm light uppercutting them from the console.

 _That was fast._

"Ahem . . . . well, at least partially. The code he provided checks out. There was a Jacob Marcelus Rienfield under that registration in the old UAC files."

"What do you mean 'was?'"

She glanced back at her notes. "According to the file I pulled up, he was declared missing 32 years ago."

The turian frowned, expecting the tale the creature told to be a whole lot of crock-shit to gain sympathy. A bad metallic taste began to cling to his rough tongue.

"I think it . . . mentioned something about that. Is there anyone else that went missing around that time?"

Samantha Traynor eagerly scrolled to the next item on an already compiled menu, while they all were still reeling in the midst of the chaos inherent in bringing an overgrown slab of meat aboard. Something about how impressed Garrus felt didn't quite catch on with his dour expression. The turian in him would barely offer a shrug and say, if anything, that the crew member was simply performing the role expected of her. The other part worried that his being impressed indicated the cloud of doubt he held of the fresh crew handling his baby. The calloused, unspeakable part dismissed Traynor as a woefully green as grass recruit scraped up by the Alliance who would surely balk when it came to the real pressures of handling core mission data in the middle of a war. While he was going to hunt down the telling scent that had laid a paw on his gun calibrations, his hopes for the crew's potential were truly in the gutter, in more ways than one.

Shepard. All that time lost to the Alliance, brought down to rock bottom by the ruthless calculus of war. Garrus knew this would be a zero-sum game but he didn't quite anticipate how much it would affect him. He didn't know what bothered him most, the fact that Shepard kept everybody in the dark about Admiral Hackett's personal favor or the fact that she was grounded indefinitely, her fate decided on by suits and barefaced politicians who had spent years denying her warnings.

He trusted her implicitly, now lamenting the lack of reciprocation. That dingy apartment he had holed up in, deciding what best to do with his fledgling Reaper 'task force' became his marching room, padding trenches into the grout with the soles of his three-fingered feet. All due to the stacks of letters he had scribbled down in his native tongue before forcing his talons to perform the steep, angular, and altogether clunky letters of a language called _'English.'_ In one, he declared, with words looking like the scribbles of a youngling spinning upon a rotating disk . . . of his feelings for the Commander. All those nights, pacing up and down, claws aching and twitching with the rigidity of its motions, through the pacing he put them through. One of the telling factors easily was the mountainous pile of scrap paper scattered among the waste-bin. Those who thought Archangel never misses a shot . . . . had surely never seen his poor accuracy in the drawing room.

That's how Shepard affected him, and it terrified him, knowing that even countless light years away, that incessant cord kept tugging at his waking moments. It frightened him further when they finally reunited, during the battle of Manae, to find the jittery suspicion he now eyed her with, peering into her mind's eye, searching for an indication that that the eye had crossed those juvenile scrawls of his, like talons on a chalkboard. It was the reason now his very nature was threatened by wayward beings, and that haze made him insubordinate, sloppy, and most heart-wrenching of all, inexplicably cold.

 _How little she must think of me, to consider that I would "turn tail" as Joker had so eloquently put it, after all those years watching her back as we made history . . . and now fighting to preserve our very way of life. Shepard was right. I'd only put her in danger now if I stood by her side._

A stray talon rubbed at the itch pinning his brow plates together before noticing that Traynor was trying to catch his attention.

"You're doing that thing again."

His predatory eyes flashed angrily.

"What?"

"Brooding."

His body betrayed him once again as he turned away, rolling his eyes like those human teenagers pop culture was so fond of. _What is wrong with me?_

"Look . . . I know what happened down there with Shepard was rough and I want to sa-"

He held up a silencing palm.

"That's enough! Did you find out about the other missing personnel reports I asked you for?"

Her doe-y eyes widened incredulously at him before subsequently narrowing in miffed silence, shaking her head subtly in disregard of the defensive but authoritative scapegoat of a slight.

 _Great, now I insulted both of our intelligence's. 'Keep it up, tough guy,' Shepard would say._

"Well, there happens to be one. David Jackory. A lowly security guard. Nothing special. Reported missing on the same day." She gave an exasperated huff as she was forced to refresh the pages held up on the holographic monitor due to the lack of activity. Cleared up, they happened to both be shots of the employees and corroborated by a still of a vid taken of the late demon by a security camera and shifted them all to a bigger holographic display for detail and background analysis: to see if there was even a mere sliver of a match.

As a seasoned detective with C-Sec in his earlier years, the turian knew enough not to assume that anybody is above killing their partner and assuming their identity to escape the law. That was under the normal suspicion he would proceed under in this investigation but that theory was invalidated by the essential crux of the issue. These were very different suspects. Beyond the occasional cosmetics and flimsy facade that some perps would hide under, it was pretty clear to what race they belonged to. But the more and more he stared at the looped video footage of the alien, the crazier it looked. This guy . . . was the real deal.

"Why have I never heard of this . . . _**U.A.C**_?" Garrus said the acronym like an expletive. His translator had trouble picking up the term so his foreign turian tongue had to curl around it and digest the letters manually.

"All this time, there should have been at least one mention of it. What does it stand for?"

"Union Aerospace Corporation. And the reason for that is that humanity . . . _we_ were . . . in a bad place at the time." She curled another strand of hair idly and then inhaled with exhaustion.

"There's something else. It's strange, the UAC project was buried a long time ago by the Alliance for illegal weapons and energy research. Two years after the disappearance of these two individuals."

She paused and bit her lip, brushing away a strand of curious fur from her forehead.

"Years ago, we used the technology the Alliance seized from the UAC facility as the basis for our own mass-accelerator prototypes during the First-Contact War. But no mention of research with demons . . . unless . . ."

His plates bristled briefly, interpreting that cliffhanger as patronization before catching himself. The dramatics was beginning to grate on the turian's plates.

"Get to the point, Traynor."

"I'm trying!" She snapped before blinking back in regret.

"Apologies, sir. The UAC is a long story."

"Well? Debrief me."

"Yes . . . sir."

Whatever had crossed her mind then seemed to have rattled her.

"Without a stable source of fuel, our planet was on the verge of going to tatters. We despaired of ever finding a solution to the damage we had irrevocably caused. Then a genius named Samuel Hayden offered a solution and we were too desperate, too needy, to object. Many thought he could do no wrong. We're not proud of it. At the time, we were stuck on our lonely planet and were quickly reaching the capacity for human life on it. One of Hayden's first projects, the colonization of Mars, and the growth of Lowell City helped relieve some of that and seeing the effects of his genius, we were eager to play along."

She flipped through another few screens on her console, frowned, backpedaled, and then dismissed the pages with a flick of her hand. Her small knuckles leaned against the console.

"That's where the story gets murky. There was a leak spread all over the extranet, pretty big deal too. As it turns out, vital tech that could have relieved the situation was purposely being held back to keep us in that cycle. The UAC needed us dependent on their energy, their product. Anybody who came close with the allegations were privately threatened with deprivation of vital energy. They had humanity by the balls with that threat."

The turian furrowed his brow plates and stared quizzically at Traynor. Rarely had something so explicit left her lips like that. He always thought Samantha was kind of shy, too shy to belt out profanity without a second's pause. This was becoming a whole lot bigger than he thought. Brief flashbacks to the chamber where he and Shepard first confronted the projection of a lone Reaper, brought his guts to a low broil.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Now, look at us!" She raised her arms and gestured to their ship-wide environment. "We've managed to orchestrate the essence of atoms and merge them like the notes to Clair de Lune but most of us are old enough to still remember a time when we were so dependent on primitive means. Alliance likes to make the other species think we were far above fossil fuels sooner. However, it wasn't long before the public caught wind of reports about how far we, as a species, were being held back. Many were already uncomfortable with how much sway the corporation held and not a shred of how that energy came to be was disclosed to the public . . . 'trust us," they said . . and we were all too happy to eat off the hand of Samuel Hayden. Everything died down for a while . . ."

"But that lie simmered over years and started reaching the boiling point."

"With poverty becoming so endemic on Earth, many pointed their sons and daughters towards Mars and launched them into a life of skilled labor. For them, it was their only source of income and losing that made the most desperate of humanity turn against each other."

She sniffed and her knuckles turned ghost-white. Her voice was gray with gloominess.

"Then we started getting reports of bodies being returned to families, shipped in heaps back to Earth. People in the neighborhoods began to whisper about kids getting stuck in the machinery, dying of frostbite, malnutrition. There was wailing in the streets day in and day out, parents holding the mutilated bodies of their children for all to see. The collective grieving sobered the few and hardened hearts till we had become blind to what were becoming. It was a nameless war and **it** was . . . chaos."

She shivered.

"For years, we fought that battle in the courts and later . . . on the battlefield. The Systems Alliance used to be the simple governing branch in charge of transit and trade between both worlds. When the quasi-gubernatorial body was rumored and slated to be gobbled up by the UAC, they stepped in for us. Like vigilantes, they exposed the extent of the UAC's deception. Vast reserves of power left to waste, technologies that would have made fossil fuels obsolete for all."

She paused and collected her breath. Garrus found it interesting to note that she had not even glanced his way once since they had begun their investigation.

"The UAC didn't take too kindly to that and the two sides confronted each other in the Demos Ravine on a lonely packaging facility on one of the Martian moons. The bloody conflict was short, reminiscent of the unofficial rail-road enterprise battles of the Wild West. What they did here was a catalyst for the rest of humanity. They took the first steps for us and we eagerly took after them; knocking the bricks off the foundation until there was nothing left."

"For all intents and purposes, the UAC was finished. The information gleaned from the UN inspection was turned over to the Alliance and having showed their capabilities in standing up for the helpless, we found a new leader. The rest is readily accessible history."

She paused and then finally looked up towards the engrossed turian whose mandibles had been flared for entire minutes, rapt with interest. They snapped back towards his concave mouth underneath the sudden stare and partly from an ache that he had only recently become aware of.

More importantly, it was the expression on her face that made him uncomfortable. It was an expression he knew all too well in himself, the day he found his entire squad massacred because of one loose end still wandering out there - that traitor, Sidonis.

It was shame.

"Those were our dark days. We could easily have ended up like the krogan or the drell, left with a shell of a homeworld. We raked up the ashes, binded up the wounds of humanity, and then took our first tentative steps into the galaxy we know . . . knew today.

Her knuckles leaned against the platform in silent anguish, turning ghostly white with how tightly she had put her appendages in a vice.

"And now we're right back where we started."

She sniffed and wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her black shoulder pads, bearing the mark of the Systems Alliance.

"We owe our lives to the Alliance. It's why we've been the most dedicated, the most motivated our species has ever been. Poverty turned to prosperity and we left that dark stain of our past in the rearview mirror along with Earth. Soon, we happily forgot that pain but the Reaper War is stirring all these old uncertainties in all of us, it seems." Her voice cracked.

She sighed and turned away from the console.

"Please, don't ask me to repeat all of that again to Shepard," she laughed but the sentiment remained.

Garrus got the inkling that this had to have been more personal than she let on. Obviously, she was too young to have lived through this period but it must have bled over. Still echoing in the void like it was now.

The turian cracked a smile and placed a comforting hand on her shoulder, what countless turian fathers had done before in times of genuine stress.

"Don't worry. I got it all on my omni-tool . . . if you don't mind . . . _annnd_ I've got a handkerchief to boot."

He presented the rag like it was a bath towel when in reality, it was stained with too many gun oil marks to look sanitary. She plucked it nonetheless from his talons, sniffing briefly before wiping her nose loudly with it. However, when she looked up, a smile had broken through the rain.

"Damn. Should have known a seasoned vigilante like you would have come prepared." She quipped, mockingly impressed. "Who were you saving this up for?

His mandibles jutted outward with an amused grunt, his arms crossed. "Well, I've been on the Normandy long enough to know you humans leak from somewhere once in a while. Insides must be as weak as your squishy carapace." That trademark drawl of his just barely revealed the mock ignorance of a krogan trying to comprehend how a human doesn't spontaneously implode.

"We're not all varren like you, sir." She shot back, blowing one final time into the rag.

"There, that should fix the Thanix cannon right up," she said in a airy tone . . . _was it a British accent?_ Traynor balled it up and tossed it to him as revenge which he caught, pinched between his forefinger and thumb in disgust.

"To be honest, I thought it would be Shepard needing a shoulder to cry on using that sooner or later."

He rolled his eyes, stowing it carefully on his utility belt.

"Funny. So, I assume Joker isn't the only one that's been getting that impression."

She pushed her hair back behind her shoulders and that's when Garrus noticed that it wasn't tied up like usual. The breeze it created reminded him all too keenly of Shepard's ruby mane. "With the gremlins running around in his head, I would have been right there with you myself, sir. It's just that some of us have been placing a few wagers which I am _not_ at liberty to divulge." The tips of her fingers met together awkwardly.

"A few . . . have been rooting for you two to seal the deal . . . you know, now that it's a war to end all wars . . . for real this time."

"Really, which one was the last 'war to end all wars' for humans? Still convinced you guys don't know what real battle is."

Like a bumbling fly to a web, she took the bait.

"Oho, really? You want to go there? Alright, let me set the scene for you here. The whole planet armaturizing themselves, radical ideologies that somehow forgot to die, stock market crashes, crop depressions, and hasty alliances that couldn't possibly be kept longer than the average fuck. For humanity, I think our old pal Churchill used that phrase to describe the importance of winning that war . . . and you're changing the subject." She noted, crestfallen.

He wanted to say something, shoot another quip from the hip, but as her expression feel deeper into grimness, the turian found the shriveled words drying on the tip of his tongue.

"It's stupid really. If anything, I should be mourning the present instead of a past I barely got to see."

Garrus hummed a soothing tune in his subharmonics, even though it was falling on deaf ears. He experienced enough from Shepard to know that the futility of the gesture made his sincerity all the more genuine, something politicians had clearly forgotten.

"You said it yourself. The Reapers are bringing out vulnerabilities in all of us. It's alright to be scared."

She straightened and then mock-slapped herself.

"I'm a soldier, goddammit! There're more important things to get on with. Maybe the Mars archives holds more information."

She made to dive into the plethora of information left on her terminal but the turian stopped her by grasping her by the wrist. She gave a brief cry of surprise, her eyes questioning the sudden physical contact. Garrus leaned back, allowing the mask of professionalism to drop down.

"Maybe . . . but we're not here to chase red herrings. Our priority is the Crucible. I'm not going to send Shepard in based on a conjecture . . . and certainly not for that thing."

She looked as if she was about to object, but the words died on her lips.

"Understood, sir," came her mute response.

"I heard enough. I'm going in for an interrogation. See what else I can glean from our mysterious guest."

He loped off towards the Med-bay but was stopped just short of the scanner that would allow him access upon hearing the meek, timid voice of Samantha.

"If Jacob is who he says he is, please try to help him however you can. The UAC stole a lot from us . . . and likely from him as well. Don't be too harsh."

He paused but did not look back, betraying no emotion. Harshness had become part of his routine, his life, as a beat cop or a vigilante. There would be no exceptions.

"That's all up to him," was all he managed to offer.

Then he crossed the threshold.

. . .

 ** _Meanwhile_**

. . .

"Please, doctor, I need a mirror. I need to see the damage for myself."

No amount of pleading could change the doctor's mind. She refused to hand him anything and his continued persistence caused the requests to be ignored without a second glance. Something about the potential trauma being too much for him to cope with.

He snorted with disdain. Nothing could compare to hearing the sounds of his own bones breaking inside of him or body parts falling into a heap of his own flesh. Or coping with the fact that he had become . . . what? A demon with free will? Though he wondered how long that would last. The other demons had been dragged to the temple by some influence . . . probably that corpse in the chamber. Could it still speak to him from across the void?

Jacob shivered.

Reproachfully, and quickly becoming sour, he fell silent and paused unnecessarily before every request made by the doctor, but he eventually obeyed every time. The routine was becoming mind-numbing, asking to raise his arms, check his vitals, flex his claws. Checking his pupillary response, reflexes, and inserting every node possible through his veins to monitor his vitals. The drone of his staccato heartbeat had habituated into nothingness.

Nothing to ponder except the strange turn his life had taken. When the mirror thing didn't pan out with her, he tried asking for water.

His exasperated snarl managed to draw the attention of the doctor who had now shifted to detective, studying slides of his tissue and blood through a microscope. His outburst drew her attention who peered up at him through the rims of her curious spectacles.

"Can I at least have some water . . . you know, if it isn't _too_ traumatizing to my health."

She frowned briefly but the delay in understanding did not stop her from flashing him a glare, something that he had seen a million times when his tactless wit was too much for the ladies but it looked odd . . . on someone her age. That was not to say she didn't look youthful, but it was clear that technology and good health had a factor in her now worryingly youthful look. It didn't help that his testicles still reacted to the cold, sterile environment and hugged closer to him for warmth. He prayed she didn't notice.

 _Funny, a demon resorting to prayer for perfectly trivial matters . . . Never thought I'd be the one experiencing it._

After turning away from the dispenser that thankfully wasn't the sink, Dr. Chakwas presented him with a biodegradable, fresh from the office, coffee cup. He watched it apprehensively as an unwanted thought came in.

This would be his first drink of water in what felt like an eternity of drinking an unknown cocktail of blood. That, and accidentally consuming the occasional bit of intestines that managed to be carried down by the streams from age-old massacre grounds from afar. It was rivers of it, a veritable water hole. Some part of him was terrified that he had developed a taste for it or worse yet, dependent on the stuff, now more so from being . . . not him.

"Well? Come on, it isn't poison."

His head snapped up in surprise, shaking him out of his deplorable line of thinking. Rienfield briefly noted her Australian accent as he tentatively plucked the cup from her grasp. Instinctively, he expected his lips to automatically curl around the rim but when he tried to send it down the hatch, cold water dripped onto his trouser area. With a curse, he amended and now put his snout completely vertical and let gravity run it through his thirsting maw.

And was relieved to find it was indeed refreshing.

"Ahhhhh, I've been drinking blood for so long, I thought I would lose the taste for water."

She fixed him with an absurd look and then he reexamined what he said.

"Sorry, down where I was stranded, the only thing I had to drink was pools of blood. Jesus, I had no idea where the shit came from but it was the only thing I had to survive. I guess now some part of me thought I would turn into a vampire or something. When you're trapped in hell, the shit you see . . . nothing seems absurd anymore."

She gave him an odd look, akin to the _hold my drink_ expression and judging by the way she finally peeled off her gloves, he was right in his assumption.

"So, are we talking about hell of a metaphorical variety or . . . ?"

He held out the cup and licked his chops with an inelegant swipe of his reddened tongue then promptly sucked it back in for the threatening visual it created. He raised the glass.

"You're buying. Want to get the rest of the story? You're gonna have to pour me another round."

It was as if every little idiom and cultural reference he made to humanity in general stumped the doctor for a good moment.

She blinked. "Yes . . . alright."

With refill in hand, he took another long swig the reptilian way and downed it in one go this time.

"The literal variety, Doc." He said suddenly.

"Excuse me?"

"The place was flesh and blood, just like you or me. I can't hold a philosophical discussion about the potential ramifications but hell . . . inferno, whatever it is, happens to be a real dimension. It may just be coincidence that it embodies our concept of hell, the tortured screaming, the sound of flesh tearing, shit that burrows into your head and never let's go."

He felt an odd tremor deep in his forearms, and he raised them to study the blackened slits along them. Some part of him had repressed that last detail of his transformation, hoping that he was so delirious by the end of it that he had imagined parasites tunneling within him.

Rienfield shook his head. "It takes massive amounts of energy to point yourself in that direction, but I managed to stumble on this portal. Ended up falling like an idiot. If I hadn't been turned into this thing, I would have been heavily scarred potentially minus a limb. Somehow, I managed to live in that place for almost a month. Most only lasted an hour, ripped to shreds by monstrosities you can't even imagine. Case in point, me."

He paused, reflecting on how the relative calm in his new voice allowed the pounding and muffled screams of his old one to come through, if only slightly. Old Jacob fighting to the surface unsuccessfully. As a distraction, he took another swig from the cup but found it empty. She didn't even ask. The doctor scooped it out of his hand and went to work on another refill.

"So . . . what race are you?"

He blanched incredulously. "I'm human! Like you."

She offered him a tight smile over her shoulder, and he knew exactly

"Of course, my apologies for the eagerness, Mr. Rienfield."

She continued, as if trying to draw attention away from the slip.

"So, I heard you've been acquainted with Joker?"

"Yeah, your goons wouldn't even let me see the cockpit." He indicated sourly.

"You're on a warship now. It's all standard procedure."

He chuckled sardonically, shaking his elongated maw.

"Great, you sound just like every other VI I've-"

Then pain shot through his chest like a lightning bolt had stabbed his heart. He gave a shuddering gasp, clutching his exposed ribs, his muscles spasming uncontrollably. He doubled over and clattered to the ground as the chair skidded back with an ear-wrenching screech. Dr. Chakwas immediately came to his aid, trying to catch him before he fell but tumbled along with him underneath his weight. She was shouting something to him, but his eyes pointed towards the fresh dispenser. Cold was spreading through him, sending all his systems haywire and beginning to shut down his vision.

"Your body temperature is dropping like a rock . . ." She made to leave but fingers easily wrapped and held firm around her forearm. She cried out as his talons dug in briefly. No time to apologize.

"Coffee . . ." he groaned.

"What?"

"COFFEE!" he boomed with sudden impatience.

She stumbled to her feet and sped off. The fresh pot of coffee clung to the air, the vapor whistling into his lungs, releasing him of an oppressive pressure. He snatched it and glugged it down. What must have been boiling to the human felt only like a cup of tea that had been standing out for too long.

"Get me another!" he demanded, his body continuing to quake.

She wrestled with the coffeemaker for more juice before it bringing to his mitts where he promptly, and unceremoniously, tossed its contents over his head, steam instantly rising from all around.

Gradually, he felt his entire body restart, and he gasped.

Dr. Chakwas was staring at the monitor.

"Your internal temperature is returning to norm . . . wait, it's too fast . . . what the hell?"

He grunted a query, but she didn't answer. His raptor-like head craned around to face the monitor where he saw the blurry, out-of focus measurement sharply increasing in height. The relatively weak nodes hooked up to him had begun to melt.

"That can't be possible. Your brain would be liquefied by now."

He grabbed her by the arm again to shake her out of the current train of thought. His demonic eyes peered into hers intently, following even as she squirmed underneath his hold.

"Right now, I need to find out what happened to my family. Do you understand me? I need to know what happened on Earth."

The topic seemed to come out of nowhere, but he needed her to understand the mental crisis that had befallen him as well. If he had an untimely expiration, if his form was unstable and short-lived, Rienfield would never know what became of his distant family.

"I'm not so sure that's advisable . . ."

"Make it advisable!" He warned with a low snarl, jostling her again. "No more games, Doctor. I need answers. I can't keep playing this charade for much longer."

Her eyes narrowed with anger and she attempted to pry his claws away.

"Then get your meaty paws off. I don't take unruly aggression in here. That you leave outside the door just like everybody else." She paused in her comeback to brush herself off. "You'll get your answers."

She breathed an exasperated sigh and then went on an extended silence that started to irk the behemoth.

"Earth," she blurted out but then she paused, hesitating to choose her next words carefully. ". . . has fallen. It's been overrun with giant machines called Reapers. They're here to obliterate all life in the galaxy and all our families are cut off. They're actively turning the best of us against each other, converting thralls where they can and hunting the rest that don't succumb. It's an extinction level event and this is the only ship and crew that can put an end to the madness."

Something scratched at his brain, a familiar word. A whisper clawing to the surface but a chill ran down his spine in contrast to the rest of the heat current.

"Reapers?"

In his mind's eye, he was brought back to the madness of Hell, searching the ashes for life. He saw the titans again, leveling the hellish mountains into barren plains and hurling vicious fire at each other. Then he saw a mug he wished he would never see again. The Insect.

Again, it's life was replayed but another voice, a rumbling quake that did not exist before, narrated his horror. The insect. Reapers. A hand fell on his slack maw. It was from those creatures he was reborn out of. Those he drew energy from. Those he breathed from.

All that time, those demons were worshipping what lay entombed in that tomb, having influenced their thoughts. The one that had stolen his body from him. A dead Reaper . . . and now he was one of them.

"They . . . can't have done this."

She frowned at him but she was also desperate to get his mind off the implications.

"I got a catalog of the listings of shelters. What are the names of your family, Jacob?"

The first name basis barely dragged him out of his growing horror. His tongue stumbled and tripped over the names.

"Little Helena . . ." he paused and shut his eyes against the torrent of emotions that him. It was always her nickname of her. " . . . Rienfield. Forget that first part." he croaked out mournfully. "And Pierce Orville Rienfield."

Dr. Chakwas pulled out a datapad, one that looked cracked and chipped from usage. After a brief few seconds she set it down on her lap.

"Well?" he demanded. "Where are they?"

She looked like she wanted to backpedal drastically but her hands were knowingly tied. "I'm sorry, Jacob. Pierce passed way from lung cancer six years ago."

He dipped his head in mourning and a low keen began to whistle out from the depths of his maw.

"Oh god, I could have been there . . ."

The datapad clattered on the table.

"I don't see how this can help you."

"I don't care. I need to help _them,_ can't you see? I have _no-one_ else to live for. Now, tell me about Helena."

"I . . ."

"Tell me!"

She shuddered. "She's gone. Her body was recovered yesterday."

That was the final straw. He trembled in a dizzying mixture of fear and anger as his world came crashing down. Dr. Chakwas put what was supposed to be a comforting hand on his shoulder.

"She lived her life well. From what I briefly read, it seemed she was a remarkable girl, got a Ph. D in Astrophysics, respected by her colleagues. I had EDI briefly pull up any mentions of your name on the extranet and this came up. It's a transcript of her acceptance speech when she graduated summa cum laude from MIT." Chakwas tapped a few commands into her data pad and handed off to him.

His predatory eyes gleaned over the information and he could not help the bittersweet swell of pride that opened up inside him with every passing line.

 _"And above all others, I owe my thanks to my eldest brother, Jacob Marcelus Rienfield who won the most prestigious award in life and never reaped what he sowed. Giving his sweat, blood, heartache, and ultimately, his life for a family's future. It is from his inspiration and sacrifice that I stand before all of you today. I watched him pull off night school while supporting a hungry family with such a sad grace. Maybe he never knew that we understood but that made his resolve stronger because he didn't ask for any of it. He did it without compromise til the bitter end. He deserved better._

A pause.

 _It is my honor to have been contracted by the Alliance to create the next-gen models and data for our starships dedicated to exploring a world without end for many years to . . ._

He paused the torturous recording, and the roll of his sinewy shoulders caved inward with grief. He could not stand another word uttered from that source. That voice, all grown up, but still deeply familiar.

In the silence, she slowly plucked the datapad from his limp talons, waiting for an objection that would never come, a strength that had long since faltered.

"Helena helped us to stand where we used to be . . . and _nothing_ , not even the Reapers can take that from her."

He shook his head and brushed off the comfort. After a while, as his shoulders trembled, he finally looked up from the dark place formed by the shadows of his looming form.

"I killed her," he whispered.

"Don't say that," she chided.

"Isn't it obvious? The Reapers, they're what the demons were so afraid of. I tampered with technology, energy that shouldn't exist and not only eviscerated the little humanity I had left, I also left my family at the mercy of the world. They're one and the same and I let them loose."

He dug painfully into the sinews of his right thigh until blood came out.

"This . . . body was their conduit. "

Something about what he said seemed to personally strike her as she didn't immediately protest his dangerous line of thinking. Another thought dawned on him and in the throes of panic, he began to wail.

"I can't remember what they used to look like anymore! My face . . . Oh, god, it's _all_ fading." He reached for an identification badge on his fleshy chest and found nothing but sinews. Rienfield checked his nonexistent pockets for the old-fashioned wallet that contained all the photos he had of his family, the late girlfriend, anything . . . something that could prove to himself what he thought he once was.

"FUCK! I need it! Where is it?"

He rolled off the cot which careened into the corner with a metallic twang and sped off, pursing and parsing through the materials on the tabletops and in the drawers lining the medical facility. Pill bottles slammed against the handles before being thrown on the other side. His talons scraped along the table, shoving off anything that didn't meet the standards of his tense limbs. He rummaged through papers, smearing them in the process with blood, his own tears now. With greater ferocity, he yanked the drawers out of their sockets and sent data pads flying through the air. They were names he did not recognize, psych evaluations that meant nothing to him.

He rounded on the doctor and pointed an accusing talon.

"My personal effects!" he boomed. "I know they've been salvaged. Where are you keeping them? Why are you hiding ME?"

He turned away from her startled visage and faced the drawers once again.

The guards burst in but he ignored them at his back. They were insects, annoying but not worth his time. He could only distinctly sense the doctor telling them to back off. _Progress . . . ruined. Why did he keep hearing these words?_

Upon finding one drawer locked, he wasted no time snapping the hinge off and pulling another data-pad. His intent was to stamp it on the ground and continue his search, but his talons caught on something familiar in the roughness of antique paper like the journal harbored by that doomed soldier back in that cave. Pausing, his eyes crossed the subject line. Dates and reflections of the doctor but they weren't his. The man's rage returned, conspiracy flashing through his electric gaze.

"Is this some sort of trick to get me to accept this!? Accept what I was turned into! I will not. You can't have me!"

His body shuddered and then he found his movements slowed as his rage ebbed away . . . His back slammed against the drawers as he slid onto his haunches.

"They're all I have left. Please . . . I can't live like this." He hoarsely begged to the doctor.

He pulled the strange gun hidden underneath the journal, heard the choruses of barked orders of "put the weapon down!", the jostling of small arms at the ready . . . but his eyes glazed past to an unseen palace, knowing he had never escaped his ultimate fate . . . his doom.

"You see . . . this is a path I have to take myself."

It quickly dawned on her. Karin knew the procedure all too well. It was the words of a dead man. Then the gun was jammed into his bony maw.

"Jacob, **NO!"**

Without an ounce of hesitation, he pulled the trigger.


	5. Breach

**A/N: Thank you for the unprecedented amount of reviews, favorites, and followers thus far. I've been part of some already wonderful (and insightful) conversations about the plot and the characters. I'm honestly surprised I haven't seen anybody lament the lack of Doomguy so I must be doing something right. As you can no doubt guess, this is a more somber undertaking than what you guys are probably used to with DOOM. We're close to hitting the 3,000 views mark. Your feedback is always inspiring and as always, enjoy!**

* * *

 **Chapter 5: Breach**

* * *

 _The Dark Recesses_

 _I'm dead. I'm supposed to be obliterated. I can't escape. I never escaped._

It was some combination of these phrases that he was ruminating on in the darkness. The porcelain wrapped underneath his fingertips remained unyielding, his forearms draped haphazardly over the rim of the tub. At his back was barely a foot of water high, unreacting to his displacement. Over his head, the faint hiss of a broken shower-head could be heard, marinating him in ice-cold water. As the droplets curved and twisted down his backside, they merged together with beads of blood adorned on his broken body until they couldn't possibly adhere any more to each other and they split apart at each crossroad in his musculature. Little by little, the drizzle stained the lake at his behest with the color of rust. But when the soft plinking started up again, it was like a primal drum to his ears. Blood hit the water like gunshots, trailing a soupy, crimson vapor like oil suspended in water, not knowing which way is up and down, lingering and formless. Each successive drop pushed the rest out of the way into increasingly complex nebulae.

Like a corpse, his back was hunched over and with kneels curled up against him. He shivered, eliciting unusual amounts of saliva. He kept spitting it out weakly, the foam it created dribbling down his maw.

Outside was darkness but the shadows made him feel as if he were in an observation studio. A small plaything to tinker with until the obsessiveness of its tinkerer had been sated. It was not an accident.

" **You're right. You NEVER escaped this place."** A disembodied voice snarled. Jacob's head lolled back, blinking stupidly into the soupy inkwell of his environment which contrasted the blood washing away from his demonic form.

 **"But I do . . .** ** _admire_** **your enthusiasm."** The being's sudden amusement was cut dry with a multilayered chuckle comprised of eons of tortured screams and what sounded like chittering. A ghost of a touch prodded the back of the man's head. Like waving off an insect, his fingertips felt his scalp until it suddenly squished into a trench of brain matter and gore, benumbed to any pain. The place where the bullet blew the back of his head out. A buzz of motion kicked up over him as the being leaned in closer.

 **"I have slim pickings in potential pawns but you . . . you might** _ **finish**_ **what we started.** _ **End**_ **his dominion. We long thought o** **ur acquisition of Argent D'Nur would be enough. One** _ **necromancer**_ **continues to elude us."** The demon spat the term like an expletive: a paranoiac, ignoble expletive.

 **"And he has caused us much strife.** **"**

The blood gelled and camouflaged in his palm and yet, Rienfield could only feel the light drizzle of water. Panic and a modicum of fury began to clog his throat. "If you've come here to gloat, you're doing a terrible job at it, considering your hell incarnate. This was supposed to be **it!** Now, where the hell are the pearly gates?"

 **"It seems the Seraphim have abandoned you. Very well, pedantry is no concern of yours. Good."**

The way the being said it, as if he were praising a pet that had to be led by the ear sent Rienfield bristling further. Despite this, he couldn't stifle his own terror that death hadn't in fact offered him a sanctuary, a refuge in darkness to escape the demons pursuing him . . . so he **wouldn't goddamn remember** his extinct family. Though he wasn't well-versed in matters of the metaphysical nature, he began to wonder if his soul was really cursed, damned in the clutches of the worst beings that could walk out of those ancient texts.

 **"Really, I meant to speak with you earlier but my cousins sometimes get restless. No matter, I'm giving you a new life. We have endless amounts of drones from which to draw but you will be the cloak and dagger that sees us through the 9th dominion."**

Where fury had provided him the tools of wit, impotence began to creep into him. "Wha - Who are you? I-I can't be here."

The disembodied being snorted sanctimoniously. **"Hmmmm . . . still dense and I thought you were out of the woods. Getting tongue-tied around the female you fuck is one matter but the Praetors would rather have expediency than your uncomprehending tongue. And to think, Olivia had such high hopes for your future."**

Jacob fell silent, despite the number of questions chasing each other for top bidding in his head.

 **"Perhaps, you will prove me wrong like you did her. No ordinary bumpkin can get himself this far. You may hold her envy for I offer you a consolation. You have been made a god by the Imperatrix. Now, you will be a force among man and make no mistake, the Doom Slayer is man."**

Slowly, he fell out of his brief mental rut and evaluated the message.

"You want me to kill someone. Someone threatening enough to . . . . hold the phone." The demon did a double take.

"You're telling me . . . All of Hell . . . is afraid of one Joe?"

He couldn't help it. Jacob laughed, his gaping maw clacking discordantly as his whole body shook with uncontrollable mirth.

 **"YOU DARE?" The voice boomed indignantly.**

"Oh well," he chuckled, wiping his non-existent brow as pieces of brain flew out unnoticed.

"Yeah, good luck with that. At least someone is giving you demons what for. To be honest, I wish I'd met this guy sooner. Sounds like my hero."

The tub collapsed on its side with such a force that it was like a giant magnet had been stuck to the side. Toppled from his porcelain coffin, he rolled unceremoniously to a stop on a vertigo-inducing void. Underneath his prone form was nothing . . . the rushing tide of blood water never reached him. The space was so vacant and devoid of three-dimensionality, it seemed like a surface did not exist, as if he was floating above a dark cloud. And some part of it nagged at his mind like a puzzle that needed solving.

"Alright," he groaned, rising to his haunches. "What makes you think . . . I'll be able to do a crack shot on this guy? If he's powerful enough to survive your onslaught, I'd just act as cannon-fodder to the dude. You're desperate. Now, an anomaly has came along and made you feel powerless."

 **"Powerlessness . . . is too strong a word for little minds. Your mere existences are plagued with the inevitability of death. Demons embrace it . . . and you . . . you're not quite so human now are you? I'm appealing to your baser instincts, Nak'tyn. _"_**

With the only worthless ability from his days as a duct-rat in mind, he hacked up the pent-up mucus in his throat and aimed it like a projectile towards the general vicinity of the looming voice. Pan-handling seemed to pay off.

"Yeah, and that's all you can do, huh? You're asking favors from a dying man with no next of kin, a slain family. What could you possibly have to threaten me with?"

 **"You are confusing bravery with recklessness.** **Do not mistake me for a petty criminal with methods so base.**

"You know, if dying is one last fuck-you to your oh-so-terrible visage . . . Well then, looks like I'm already on that train connection. I can't believe the top echelon of hell could be so full of shit."

He waved a dismissive slight right before an invisible hand seized him by the neck. He barely managed to gulp before a clawed thumb and a gangrenous maggot-filled potato-chip nail pressed into his throat. Jacob gurgled painfully, his fists slamming down onto the disembodied limb before scrabbling not to get bisected by the creature.

 **"Do you still think I am powerless? You are merely mortal so I can unleash everything you wished not to be. Death is not an escape for you. You retire when I say you retire.**

The being squeezed harder and he could feel his trachea beginning to split at the seams.

 **"Let me spell it out for you, whelp. Either, you take down the Slayer or you will truly become as much a monster as the one you look. Eliminate one to save many others. There have been worse deals binded in the Covenant of the Blood Priests."**

He took little sips of air, anything to keep his throat as compressed as possible. "Call this what is, Coercion. There is no deal."

His legs spun around helplessly as if from a noose that hadn't quite done the job. The pressure suddenly released and he found himself landing on his heels, water making him slip onto his broadened shoulders. The release of the pressure made him inhale sharply with throbbing discomfort.

 **"On the contrary, I'm making quite a sacrifice in keeping you autonomous. Accept my terms."**

The offer remained hanging as Jacob focused on getting back to equilibrium.

 **"Whether it is . . ." he wheezed, rising to his clawed feet, "by your hand or the so-called Slayer's . . ." he fell into a dizzying coughing fit. He wiped his maw, feeling every fiber in his knuckles clacking against his fangs like threatening batons running across iron bars in a prison block.**

 **"I'll die either way. You're only making me delay the inevitable so you know what? You made the wrong deal. Get your money back."**

 **The cracks of knuckles echoed with intimidation around the the limitless vestibule. "I've made the effort to be reasonable against my better judgement. It didn't have to be this way . . . but if you insist . . ."**

It felt like his stomach had plummeted at terminal velocity. His insides churned and revolted against their fleshy prisons with mystifying vertigo and he dropped to his knees, gagging uncontrollably. Oxygen eluded him and he clawed at the air, as if hoping to convince the disparate molecules to re-band. It all phased through his brick-like fingers in an instant. With his lungs forsaken of their primary drive, it brought him one step closer to unconsciousness, darkening his vision with every desperate gulp.

With every moment that he was denied solace, he could feel something forcing itself up like vomit perpetually stuck in the piping. He wished the sensation had received that memo as his engorged throat heaved until his ribs had long been exhausted and sore. His abs contorted into knots as he hacked uncontrollably. Any attempt to resist caused the sensation to rise ever higher up his esophagus.

Then his entire view was swallowed by an eruption of gore and blood of titanic proportions. His serrated, bony jaw unhinged and blew wide open at an impossible 90 degrees like a serpent ready to devour it's prey whole. A distorted, hallowed shriek indicated his relief when oxygen flooded back into his system.

Then slitted demonic eyes the color of immortal ichor slowly dawned on the reason for this. A fleshy, tubular mass of gore twisted and whipped around from his exposed throat like one overgrown pulsating tentacle which thrummed and huffed lowly in disturbing mimicry of his short-lived consolation.

His whole body twitched and shuddered briefly, every fiber of his being screamed in terror, flooding his vocals in agonizing spades until the momentum broke through his dam of self-control. A howl ripped through his being, robbing him once again of all oxygen and reason. His outcry was reinforced by the sharp, grating shriek of his second set of mandibles, blood scattered to the four winds away from the epicenter of his vibrating, emaciated extension.

Those damned critters from earlier, erased from his flagellated memory like a nightmare, crawled around his meter-long membrane like locusts, elucidating the horrible length as they embedded themselves in orbs the color of piss, dotting constellations upon his visage.

 **"Do you see it? What you embody? Humanity's rampant terrors, their collective visions upon a mere glimpse of Doom, nightmares incubating over eons, and you have the honor to experience a mere sliver of it. Makara and Naga, Creator and Created, Progenitor and Progeny. All joined together in their natural roles. It's marvelous. The Reapers will never comprehend true artistry."**

Every darkened opening along his limbs whistled like openings on a flute; the resting places of his own working ecosystem flaring outward in momentous fury.

 **"What . . . did you say?" A voice, gaunt and stripped bare of all resemblance to his humanity, echoed it out for him in low tones. The extension cocked itself intelligently to the side in twitching anticipation.**

 **The monster feigned surprise. "Oh . . . I do apologize for re-opening that fetid wound of yours. That poor excuse for mediocrity you call a family? Good riddance. They never appreciated your potential. Humanity has forsaken you. The Reapers conquest is a small price for securing what has long been ours, what your species has long ceased to see. You are the first of many, our prodigal children, returning home at last, the undying spark in the ashes of billions of worthless beings. Though there have been setbacks and tribulations, we were always there. What you fail to notice in each other is a prospective future we have long seen in your kind. No more will the worthy submit to lesser beings. It is us who cherish . . . who love you . . . as a true family should . . . if only you submit willingly."**

Jacob rose to his feet, his second set of jaws flicking around restlessly, watching the looming darkness from the hazy eyesight of dozens, the critters embedded along his new appendage corroborating the environment and feeding him a constant stream of visual data like a mutant super-organism, a cohesive legion of symbiotic resources at his fingertips. It happened to be the most gut-wrenching but altogether, intoxicating sensation of all time. His blood was singing like a boiling pot of tea.

 **"You're Bat-shit INSANE. " He growled.**

 **"Careful, now. Wouldn't want to say anything you'll regret. Truth is, whatever you plan to do, you will not be able to evade your instincts for long. The hunt is on, Nak'tyn. The difference will be whether or not you follow my terms before you submit to your baser instincts. For the sake of those around you, if your value your fellow human beings as much you excise, you will bring me the Head of the Slayer."**

The being's next words died down in their intensity as if he were simply covering a base in a legal document. **"Oh, and I left you with a little training exercise to sharpen your meager skills when you wake up. Don't worry. They're expendable but I'll be watching."**

Now Jacob's voice slithered on, spoken in halting, snarling pauses in his confusion. "What are you talking about? What challenge? Who _are_ you?"

 **"Some call me Lord of the Locust Horde, Bringer of Plague, Spirit of Death. They're some of my favorites but you? You may call me . . . Father Abbadon."**

 _The resounding snap of its fingers echoed like the tumultuous ringing of a blow . . . and everything went dark; once again, unwillingly, into the breach._

* * *

 ** _Normandy: CIC_**

Before the turian had even set a three-fingered foot past the bulkhead door, an alarm rang out, flooding the combat information deck in red emergency lighting. He grunted, shielding against the glare, wondering in his periphery how the CIC could be so dimly lit during normal operations.

Any chance for quips quickly died down as EDI hailed him personally over omni-tool.

"There's been a shot fired in the Med-Bay. As we speak, the crew is evacuating the deck in case of a containment breach."

That call of duty ingrained in his species' bones bellowed into action, the hydraulics in his limbs running full speed down the nearest hatch, never minding the elevators which would be disabled as per standard emergency procedures.

"Damn it, is Dr. Chakwas safe? Any casualties?" He leaped off the ladder smoothly the rest of the way down in a predatory landing on all-fours among some netted-over crates that had yet to be unpacked from the previous dry dock.

"Her life signs remain strong although I cannot judge her safety. My surveillance in the Med-Bay has overloaded. I'm locked out of the room. Working on a bypass to restore function. Standby."

Garrus didn't have to wait long as no sooner had the last word sounded off when EDI returned.

"All life signs have been . . . hmmm, that's irregular."

He paused in his tracks, knowing that anything that perplexed EDI had to be serious.

"According to my limited readings, I count no less than 63 lifeforms present in the Med-Bay."

If the plates of his brows hadn't the will to escape already, they did now. "Spirits, run the scan again. It has to be a glitch."

"I'm working through peripheral systems, collating data. Relying on Indirect triangulation but I am quite certain of my conclusion."

He glanced longingly at the racks of alcohol lined up along the poker table to his right, making note to imbibe heavily once this _Vi'kn_ was over with, before flicking through the contacts in his omnitool and hailing the Med-bay.

"To the Titans above, I'm going to disembowel Hacket myself for making us back-track to this inhospitable rust bucket of a planet." He vowed lowly, clambering to his feet in the Starboard Observation Room.

Isolating the signal further still by covering his fleshy aural canal, his advanced hearing strained for a lick of indication of what Titans had stirred on the ship. Garrus rushed ahead unflinchingly as he strode merely milliseconds before the hatch parted to reveal . . .

Order. Perfect, Calm, Collected, Order.

He was glad to see nothing like the utter chaos, the fires, or the dead littering the halls when the First Normandy was destroyed. There was a calm, orderly file down the escape chutes to secret locations designated for emergency situations, where escape pods would be waiting, if the situation came to that. He nodded briefly to one of the orderlies ushering the others down and pointed at another, signalling at his back for the soldier to follow.

"Spirits, what is going on in there, Doctor? EDI's picking up abnormal readings in the Med-Bay. "

The alien paused briefly, listening intently for a reply which he was denied.

"Respond!"

With Safeties off, the turian wheeled around the corner and emerged in front of the Deck 3 elevator, peering down the end of his barrel while checking his corners, noting with a miffed snort that the door panel to the infirmary obstinately glowed red.

Just as he was assuming the worst, a tremulous voice broke through a brief wall of residual static.

"I'm here, Garrus. The crew is unharmed." Fractionally, he let himself breath in relief but it didn't sound like the all clear would be appropriate. Something had spooked her into near catatonia.

"Spirits, then who fired the shot?"

Another pregnant pause, in which he feared he had lost contact before the Doctor responded seemingly out of necessity.

"You need to come down and see this."

"I'm here. Just open the door."

He sprinted haltingly to a standstill in front of the gates which now, glowed green. Garrus growled with impatience as it took stock of foreign contaminants, cycling decontamination before slowly, mercifully, parting.

When he saw the spray of blood still seeping from the wall, his heart nearly stopped. In a mosaic of gore, trickles of thick globules matted the sterile wall, pieces peeling themselves off in the wake of artificial gravity.

It was then his eyes perceived the corpse slumped against the requisition cabinet. The being looked as if in the midst of sleep except for the trickle of blood pooling from its unspooled tongue, hanging limply from its Varren-esque Jaw. The horns had carved a path straight through the medicine cabinet. In the chaotic array of painkillers, antibiotics, and ointments that littered the floor, he spotted a Predator pistol lying not too far from his curled, shriveled grasp. Garrus allowed the detective instinct to wash over him as he studied the demeanor of the current rotation of guards, rifles dangling uselessly at their sides. Dr. Chakwas was mysteriously huddled in the corner, looking paler than was possible in such a setting, hand hovering over her mouth in silent shock.

"Oh God, He took his own life. Poor, wretched creature." The Doctor made a strange gesture over her heart and shoulders before bringing the shaky appendage to bear on her whitened lips.

Upon hearing these words, an unexpected torrent of emotion flooded over the turian. In part, there was an ingrained respect to the veracity of his sacrifice and it reminded him of the countless beings still to be at the mercy of such a crisis. Turians would commit suicide in droves if they ever succumbed to the inevitably to indoctrination, to stem and separate the doomed from the endangered. A Bravery like that in an anomaly like him was unprecedented.

Maybe, Jacob was just another senseless casualty of the Reapers . . . and Garrus let his faulty, hormonal instinct get the better of him. When he blinked back into awareness, the Doctor was crouched beside Rienfield, offering the same odd gesture to the corpse.

"At least," she sniffed, bowing her head in sorrow, "he will reside with his loved ones again in the after-life. God, he must."

Placed in the uncomfortable situation of being frozen in a bout of senseless guilt, he simply observed the ritual of the doctor run its course, the guards presiding solemnly at the scene, and he knew in that moment, that they had witnessed and come to the same dreadful conclusion. The Doctor rose after a few minutes and the watchers stepped in to lift the corpse onto a waiting body bag.

"What have I missed?"

Garrus barely offered a grunt in greeting as Wrex, with the ever sunny disposition, stepped in side-by-side with him.

"Wow, first, you neglect to inform me that we have the perfect hazing candidate walking around, and now, I'll never get to test this so-called demon's mettle in combat. PFFFTTT, one bullet. Guy was weaker than the trembling humans pissing their pants would have me believe."

"Wrex . . ." he huffed in somber admonishment, shaking his head, talons crossed over his arms heavily.

The big lizard blinked heavy lids as he feinted being taken aback. "Oh, don't tell me you already got friendly with the damn thing."

"Not in the slightest. Read the room, fossil."

Heeding the endearment, the Krogan followed his gaze as Chakwas mechanically rearranged the limbs to interlock at the demon's chest.

"Rienfield pulled the greatest sacrifice. He knew what indoctrination was doing to his body without even the _decency_ of losing his mind in the process." Garrus spat in venomous loathing of the Reapers, voice lowering to a serrated thrum.

"And they're going to keep doing this until we tear each other apart. How many people will take the fall because of the Reaper's? Titans above, its nigh unimaginable." He seethed, wheeling towards the nearest bulkhead, his knuckles cracking in furtive terror.

Speaking of which, his omnitool flared open with a signal from Shepard. Garrus worryingly peered up at the krogan before patching himself through, brushing away the sudden irritation underneath his right breast plate with a brush of his talons.

"Hey, big guy, has everything settled down?"

His sub-harmonics trilled unexpectedly.

"I'm fine, Shepard. Trust me, a spurned turian is nothing to worry about."

"Oh, good to hear." The meekness tinged in her voice hinted that there was more to her sudden communicae and he briefly fretted over the possibility of a gross misinterpretation of the question. But he refused to volunteer the other possible subject of the inquiry. Now, he scrambled to fill in the silence.

"Look, once you're done, if you still want me around, we can talk. There's . . . a few things I need to get off my chest and I'm sorry I let it interfere with the mission. That was never my intention, you know that, Shepard?"

He tried to suppress the urgency eeking out of his sub-harmonics which were nearly deafening in their orchestrations. All for the benefit of keeping the information out of Wrex's grubby aural range.

"Yeah. It's all I ask. You know, my door is always open. Just have to get Dr. Solus through the data. I'm afraid his remaining horn is going to burst with an aneurysm from the enormity of the Crucible Plans. James has already been shamed and irritated beyond hell. Took a few scalding roasts straight to the brow. Doesn't know salarians like we do, huh?"

Garrus hissed in mocked pain, cocking a brow plate. "I don't believe anybody can bend over backwards to catch a salarian's insults without risking severe whiplash. Tell him my heart goes out to him," he jested mockingly. There was a miffed call over the radio before Shepard filled in the blanks for him.

"He says, 'go fuck yourself with that voice.'"

"Wha- what does my voice have to do with this?"

"Apparently, Mr. Vega is feeling a little . . ." she paused briefly before suddenly bursting out laughing. " _ **Everything?**_ Oh, that's rich, Loco." Garrus's mandibles ticked in utter befuddlement, failing to see the joke though he waiting patiently as her laughter ebbed.

She spoke again in a softer, quieter voice. "Mordin's demanding we keep the chatter down. Anyways, how's the new resident holding up? Anything the techs were able to divine?"

He gripped his cowl in discomfort. Had they been clueless, married civilians, green as the day they were born about the harshness of reality, he would have spared her from the truth. Frankly, none of them were that kind of a person.

"He's passed on. Committed suicide." He paused, his tongue slithering out in an attempt to bring it justice but found the words felt so frustratingly inadequate.

 **"Reapers."** She growled in utter loathing without missing a beat.

"There's nothing we could have done for him. Spirits, can't tell how Dr. Chakwas' mental state is faring. She was the one who witnessed the whole debacle. Haven't ever seen her like this since the Collector Dreadnought."

There was a long period of silence in which static was his only consolation.

"Okay, we'll be right there."

"No! Wait!" he called, more harshly than he meant to.

"What's up?" There was subtle shift in volume but not in inflection, which made it seem like she had already lowered her device before he caught her. The turian sighed, pacing slightly as he pinched the outcropping of his flattened nostrils.

"I did some digging and Traynor seems to think there's more information hidden around in the archives. Something called the Union Aerospace Corporation. Ring any bells?"

"Shit. I've heard bad things about it."

"Yeah, tell me about it. Before he died, Jacob was rambling about some kind of odd research that went on in there, an entire complex on Mars. That the Alliance seized most of the information. And get this: he says he's literally walked through another dimension and insists that the UAC were actively raising demons. To top it all off, our friend had no knowledge of the past 32 years. You ask me and this all sounds like a cover-up, a spirits-damned conspiracy."

"Huh? You mean like **that** place of eternal punishment? Where murderers and rapists are banished? Tortured by **those** Demons? Is that what you're getting at?"

An avian talon scratched at his forehead as if it would entice his brain to recall Cortez' little theology lesson. "Uhhh . . . maybe. Human mythology is a little lost on me."

"Wait, Reapers are the only ones that have the capability of enslaving a person entirely. That we know of . . ."

He could only rumble his assent with a heavy heart. They'd cracked opened another can of worms in an already steaming pile of it.

"We've got some unknown players around here. I don't like it . . . not when they stir in the middle of an extinction-level event. If Reapers were not the cause for his transformation . . . . We can't handle another threat on that scale. That could cost us everything!"

That was the instant the magnitude of their discrepancy dawned on both of them. Shepard swore.

 _ **"Goddammit, did we just open up another front in the war?"**_

His frame shuddered and the plates veered off his skin instinctively like flaps, similar to the way humans have that curious vestigial reflex where their fur stands on end when spooked.

"Christ, Mordin says he's going to look into it. Apparent, he's well read on our beliefs."

"I don't care. We need to make sure that wherever and whenever Rienfield came from isn't going to come back and bite us in the ass."

Shepard then grumbled something that sounded like, "Do a kindness. Deal with their shit in turn. Can't believe I fell for that one again," she bemoaned herself . . . then, taking note of her situation, she spoke up.

"We'll look into it. God, I hope we're wrong about this."

"Yeah. It was always seems like however we deal with . . ."

The turian screwed his eyes at the sudden shift of movement in his periphery, feeling an inexplicably electric chill run down his spine. Chakwas was offering some form of Last Rites with her head bowed, speaking in hushed tones, eyes closed. No, that wasn't the source of the brief motion.

His narrowed briefly but his mandibles splayed open in a slack-jawed manner as he zeroed in on the slight but deafening twitching of the cadaver, oblivious to the Doctor. It then began to rock about in earnest.

"What in the name of . . .?"

The soldiers, in their lull, noticed the source of his attention and nearly tackled Chakwas away from the shifting body-bag. Garrus cocked and raised his pistol at the seemingly undead corpse.

The rocking soon morphed into a frightening dance like bodily jumping jacks, slamming down onto the cold stretcher repeatedly before the body propelled itself off the platform and landed with a deafening _whump_ at the foot of the cot, spilling its contents to the harsh, sterile floor whereupon Dr. Chakwas let loose with a cry of terror.

 _Oh, so that's what EDI meant._

There was that can of worms personified. Figurative, no longer.

Peering over the zipper of the bag and surveying the situation was an entire colony of fat-bellied arachnids, their milky green eyes adjusting to the ships conditions. Yet even more emerged from their host, some swooning from discombobulation and tumbled down on top of the others in a desperate bid to vacate their host.

Turian's wouldn't have the faintest clue what Arachnophobia was but nonetheless, that innate human connection ignited his instant disgust at the critters parading around the corpse which was still claimed by Death. The body was in the throes of rigor mortis. Like parasites uncoiling themselves and revealing their treachery, one of the soldiers definitely had had enough and promptly vomited torrents of bile and foodstuff on the chromatic steel hall.

The soldiers, who had supported Chakwas in her momentary faint, now unslinged their weapons and took aim.

"Not in here!" he warned. "There's too many of them!"

The flash of gunfire temporarily lit up the med-bay and the fearful colony promptly dispersed in a tangle of limbs and chittering, a sound that grated on his advanced predatory hearing. Half made a beeline straight for the pool of vomit and proceeded to consume it at an alarming rate while the others diverted to . . .

"Shit! They're escaping!" He scrambled over the vents where like an inexorable tidal wave, the creatures plunged themselves in droves into darkness. The turian stamped his three-toed clawed feet straight into the center of the mass, squirting a mass of gore over its comrades but they promptly scrambled over his foot and hopped off in their attempt to flee. The other troops were vehemently reluctant to join in. Instead, they nearly leaped onto the nearest surface just to avoid touching the floor while they quaked in fear.

Wrex scrambled over and began stamping even bigger tattoos into the colony, carving them up in huge swathes. When it felt that they were making some headway, they began to notice the armor on their toes beginning to pool at their heels. The acrid scent of decomposing metal quickly clued them into the acid that would soon eat their foots entirely. They both yanked on their grieves, undoing the clasps with the urgency of a countdown before tossing them into the vent, leaping back onto their asses to put some distance between them and the critters. It was futile.

 _"What the hell is going on in there?" Shepard demanded._

After having caught his breath, Garrus got to his feet. "We have a situation. Rienfield seems to have brought an entire army of parasites onboard and they've escaped. Spirits, Shepard, they were **_living_** inside him! I'm not gonna sit here and let them run amok on the ship. We're gonna smoke them out of their hiding places. See you in a bit."

He cut off Shepard's last words and turned to Wrex who was already grinning the way only Krogans can, when the flames of destruction alight on their rugged countenances. Without the necessity of speech, he understood what kind of play they were going for.

"EDI, can you track where they're heading?"

"My sensors are limited in those pathways. However, based on the Normandy's schematics, that vent is a direct connection to the Engineering Deck. I surmise they may divert and head for the adjacent Life Support but both are likely possibilities."

He barked at the soldiers for their attention. "Evacuate Engineering and get a pair of flamethrowers ready."

Wrex fixed him with an approving nod as they marched out of the med-bay.

"We're going bug-hunting."


	6. Revival

**Chapter 6: Revival**

There are many odd ways to gain that elusive dogma called perspective. Mines? I found it at the bottom of a pool of my own vomit, crawling out of what was supposed to be my grave. A midnight black oppressive sack that smelled like buckets of piss and shed cholesterol. The poor excuse for a burial wreath was designed to easily be forgotten about, camouflaged against the starry vacuum of space . . . to be thrown right out the airlock like the goddamn pizza box.

Had I known about the shit-storm that awaited me, I would have acted like I was in love with the glorified sock.

As I disentangled myself from the blackness threatening to devour me hole, the blood pounded away in my head, and it seemed like a choir of razors on full-auto had been shoved into my non-existent hearing sockets. The jolt it offered me was transduced into the act of kicking away the infernal, clinging grave as if zombies were scrabbling at my feet, hoping the visual would be sufficient to motivate me. It's hard to care about anything when you've got nothing going for you and everything against.

My head was busted open and somehow, I was clinging to whatever shred of existence I had left. I crawled underneath the cloud of smoke wafting up from the corroded and sheered metal, treading over it with my gut without a care. Pale blood coated the floor, little, individual splatters a child might have done while messing up finger-painting of all things. I couldn't tell whether it was mines or whatever had died here. Judging by the puckered holes dotting my outstretched limbs, I'd say I'd pushed out those parasites like a pregnant mother shoving that sorry sack of shit inside her away, and I had the ruined orifices to prove it.

I was glad to be rid of the darn pests but something about the alarm told me that I was far from done dealing with them. Now, I had to go and see the spoils of my death for myself. The irony wasn't lost on me.

I was alone and it wasn't until I'd somehow pulled myself up to the wine cabinet on the wall that I heard the alarms. Loud and wailing. Irritating like an insect that doesn't quit hovering over your shoulder. If it was whispering long-hidden secrets and sweet-talking me like the devil, I wouldn't know and I wouldn't give a damn. Little demonic me. I would have thrown all that info out the door without a care.

In the end, I could count on nothing to support me in this clusterfuck. Not my family, the crew, not even the damn cabinet my elbow was leaning on. The jumpy shit shattered underneath my weight. The cacophony that ensued in the med-bay was exactly like letting a bull run wild in a china-shop.

I let out a groaned curse where a subsequent chill ran through my spine. My brain had tapped into its utility belt of easily applicable vocabulary, shit, but my tongue regurgitated a growl that sounded like . . . **Tarc.**

As was my instinct, I kneaded my eyebrows (also gone) as if it would stir the pot of bright ideas, kick myself out of the rut I'd fallen into. The motion knocked an amber bottle off its pedestal. I managed to catch the label before the thing plummeted to its death at my splayed, taloned feet. Serrice Ice Brandy.

The gnarled, sharp appendages clacked against the holes in the grates as they recoiled away from the shards. They stood in a dizzying contrast to the thick sausages crossing my vision as they crossed to wipe the fog off my eyes, utterly black with how close it was leaning on my right eye. I barely even squinted and I felt the alarming roll of membrane slapping along my eye. Fucking- nictating eyelids.

The implication therein was of a snake, the liar, the betrayer, and I had done all of those things to my new, somewhat ungracious hosts . . . but hosts they were nonetheless. Now, the parasites **I** played host to were running around, doing god knows what. In the name of the Holy Trinity, I hoped they hadn't adopted the characteristics of actual mischievous gremlins.

I retracted my grubby mitts from my face. Mercifully, they were human appendages at least.

Jesus, what a waste of good wine. God knows I needed a fixer-upper of the alcoholic variety right about now. I was a mess of flesh and bone. Maybe I was already dead, just one big fucking waking dream without end. I must have done something really terrible in a past life to deserve this.

But something had changed. Aside from the shattered skull and battered spine, I felt . . . lighter . . . like I'd instantly shed some pounds. In my hazy vision, I could see a shadow of a flicker against the lights throwing red rays round and round. The whole thing was akin to those times when you stare at a bright light too long, and have the pattern of the bulb imprinted into your sight, even if you screw your eyes shut. That headache is what I'm feeling now.

I squinted, and the patterns came alive, like holograms. These were shapes and curves and intersecting lines I could read, hieroglyphics to the untrained eye, but my demonic persona knew better. These were hell runes, something I hadn't seen before. Maybe in the battle for co-dominance of my soul, the demon had gained an edge in that bitter struggle. I shuddered to think of the implications.

Without really thinking, like I should have been doing, I traced the pattern languidly in the air but faltered midway through, a wave of nausea overtaking me. A sizzling noise brought my attention to bear, lifting my sorrowful skull to the doorway. The seams of the collapsible doorway hinges began to glow before a crackling sound busted out.

Oh, great.

The sealed, med-bay door crumpled inwards like a tin can and careened off its hinges, falling with a dry, metallic ding like it had been torched, special-ops style. It couldn't be a coincidence.

The rune stuck out even further from left-field, impossible to ignore. It flared yellow a few times as if admonishing me for my mistake, before calmly reverting back to a more agreeable color temp, inviting me to try again. I complied, and this time, I traced the rune on the back of my hand to its completion.

It seemed like a lid had slammed shut on the back of my skull, feeling like a decent whollop that propelled me forward. A weird, wet sound spooled next to my ear and it caught what sounded like ropes tightening. I'd touched the wound again and the hole was gone, fleshy but a surface nonetheless.

Healing. I had regenerative powers.

I heard the subtle click and whirled around as a camera zoomed in on me from the dining hall, lens condensing like pupils.

"I fear you might be the only one to stop this." A robotic female voice contemplated aloud over the comms. Instantly, I thought how much more soothing it was to have a female voice talking to you compared to the VI sausage party back in the UAC.

Without really wondering whether it was in my head or not, I responded lowly. "I still have a half-mind to know they'll open fire the moment I show my face."

"Indeed. Garrus will not approve. You must convince him to allow you deal with your mistake."

I huffed sardonically. "Tell me . . . is this the voice of my conscious speaking?"

"Head over to the weapon locker behind the kitchen cabinet. I have unlocked it for you."

I peered into the palm of my grubby hand, thumbing the bulging cords threaded along the sinews of callousness before experimentally cracking my knuckles. I was rewarded with a slight, subtle crack. No, **I** am the weapon. After all, that was now my purpose in life, wasn't it? If I couldn't aspire to be more than the sum of my parts, then I'd embrace it.

"Just point me in the direction of whatever I have to kill."

"Very well. Get to Engineering, one floor below. Take the ladder in the battery down the hall. I've unlocked the door."

I glanced at the back-lit hologram turning green far down the corridor of bulkheads. Too cumbersome. No, they always tell you the quickest path to an objective is a straight line. Hmmmm . . . I wonder if . . ?

My hands turned into fists, crossing them over my chest as I screwed my eyes shut. I pictured the dreaded sensation of Argent Energy rising up like a well, doing my damnedest to convince myself it wasn't going to kill me or get me further spliced.

I pictured the bastion of energy in front of me then . . . I pitched myself down the well. Instead of shearing myself on grating, an uncomfortable sensation of pressure and coolness engulfed me as if I were submerged a hundred feet underwater.

When I opened my eyes, there was a blur of motion. Bits of grain and static whizzed past as I hurled forward towards the battery at uncomfortable speeds, yet I couldn't feel the resistance of wind nor see my locomotion in action. The door hissed open and I dropped down the tunnel to my right, seeing the image of the battery reverberating in my head rather than seeing it personally. It allowed me to identify the empty space of the tunnel and I burrowed myself through it, emerging among a backlog of stacked crates. I felt the heat, which at first felt simply like an ember soon turned into muscle relaxant prescription levels of burning.

Quickly, I tried to think of my physical state. Instinctively, I pictured it as the one that I had seen reflected back at me through the mirror for nigh on 27 years. The heat dissipated with a smoldering puff and I was levitating over the fray, Terminator-style. Letting the image fade from mind caused the energy to expel outward, depositing me on the landing of a double set of stairs. I had just phased distance like a demon?

The mental catalog that was left of all my bestiary notations knew that the demons I had encountered were only able to jump between dimensions, not within it. Must have been unique to me.

I looked down at my hands, noting how the novelty of it all was quickly draining out of me. I felt tired and sick and hungry. More importantly, my ailment was resignation. My non-existent ears picked up at the frantic voices I heard looming above me.

Peering through the grating and the reverberation of metal, two sets of feet stomped to a standstill above me.

"Ken, get out of there! I've got Gabby . . . What the hell are you doing!"

The artificer didn't answer Engineer Adams for a moment, the back of his head and reddish hair the only part visible over the welding mask, sparks flying from the arc tool clutched in his trembling grasp.

"Uninstalling those expensive FBA couplings. We need to purge the system, sir. If we can time an electromagnetic pulse from the core, we can destroy them!"

"Word just came down. We have no time! They're going to be drop right on top of us if we don't get out so stop playing the goddamn turian hero and get over here!" Adams urged him.

Ken growled, an odd sound because it seemed like it was his first time doing it. He was slightly confused by it, evident in his vocals. He now was muttering lowly to himself in rapid-fire, the clink of screws and hiss of heat nearly drowning out his ramblings. "No good, six-timing beady legs is gonna beat me to the punch. Can't fire a gun worth a damn but if we canna stop them from spreading, we'll have to fry their arses like a good batch of haggis!"

Gabby nearly whispered as if it would get him to conspire to her will.

"Please, Donnelly. There's always tommorow, huh? Today just doesn't feel like a good day for you to die. It's time."

"Time for what?" Both engineers piped up.

"I'm pregnant," she blurted out, her eyes nearly driven to tears.

The sudden clatter of his plasma torch clued them into the shock that raced through him. Ken had the usual thoughts. A family, leeway to dote, a future. What kind of a man would he be to let'em grow up without a father?

He yanked with all his might, soles digging into the thin bars that made up the deck floor until the coupling nearly crashed onto his ribs. Ken pushed it off him and double-timed it to them and the first thing to come across his stupid, grinning face was this:

"I'm going to be a father?" he murmured in wonderment. Gabby rolled her eyes.

"Sorry. I had to get you over here. Wouldn't listen to proper reason, now would you?"

The Irishman nearly swooned at the deception. "Oh, that is cold-hearted, Gabby! Can't believe you had that in you!"

"I know. I can't believe it happened either." An undercurrent of sarcasm and innuendo were laced into her words. Adams nearly groaned.

"Cut the banter, you two. Get a room and get the bugs to join you in bed on your own time. Let's move!"

The voice of the machine VI of the ship sounded elsewhere, muffled from within the walls.

"Engineering is clear of evacuees. You may proceed to the lower decks."

Garrus nodded silently, cracking open the fuel cell on his M-541 Firestorm before snapping the lid back down on the volatile mixture. Wrex did the same with his load-out.

I rushed to the tell-tail glimmer of the console and was mildly surprised to find the structure and layout of its information were structured much the same way as my old workstation back on Mars. You know, without the doom-prophesying VI constantly reiterating that console locking is imperative in case of demonic threat. Really,, like demons could even read . . .

I retract that statement.

I prayed that action wasn't wildly different here. With engineering knowledge still somehow intact, it wasn't difficult to reroute myself into critical subsystems, swiping a bloody smudge onto the console to activate the lock-down. I suppose I know why the opposable thumbs weren't just lopped off with the rest of my body. Demonic meddling clearly favored human dexterity in this matter.

"Sorry Vakarian but this is my cross to bear."

With an angry buzz of red, the entrances to Engineering were knocked out just as Turian and Krogan spectacularly butted heads with the door and the subsequent cacophony of muffled, angry barks and thumping.

"Ken's plan is logical. We will vent Engineering if necessary but you better get to Life Support. My technical hardware will not be able to cut them off there." The machine woman said via intercom.

I turned out the rest of their noises of dissatisfaction, pulling a breath that was unnecessary to me in vacuum, and faced my mistake.

When I saw the sudden glow of cobalt outlining my monstrous shape slowly fade at my back as if dark clouds had eclipsed the radiance of the moon, I knew that there was no turning back. The holograms seemed to turn a deeper shade of red. I heard the skittering of countless limbs, whirling around me even as I mistakenly swatted at my non-existent ears to throw off any would-be flies.

No, they didn't mount an attack just then. I didn't give them enough credit. Everywhere I pointed my maw, the parasites stayed one step ahead, always advancing at the corner of my eye. I still felt the dull roar of the engine lightly chattering my fangs and jittering my taut spinal cord. It's dull roar reverberated the shades of intestinal lining suddenly hanging like Halloween fixtures along the corridor, stretched to capture the steady beat of an ominous drum. The radiant blue emanating from what must be the main fusion reactor filtered through the lens of gore, dousing me in bloody photonics. The cobalt light emanating from what must be the main fusion reactor was filtered crimson through the various chaotic lens of flesh and filmy tendrils of organs weaved throughout the length of the Asgardian Bride to the core. Party banners. My gracious welcoming committee.

"Oh, you shouldn't have," I exclaimed.

Wary and lurking among their improvised lair, I could hear the adhesive slaps of bleeding flesh being prised from their cohorts just barely over the bass. What drew my attention was the metallic rattling echoing from the chute above. The frantic tempo increased as if a dozen old-fashioned alarm clocks had gone off simultaneous. In the span of half a second, a broken body, wearing the colors of the crew, fell at my clawed feet. Damn it, they had already caught a straggler.

The scene was gruesome, eyes gouged out and bleeding out of every orifice. Cause of death: **Exsanguination.**

I was unwilling to drag the corpse away but the cleaners had taken care of that for me. The clicking of the parasites sounded almost mournful and apologetic as unseen hands dragged the corpse away behind the glorified show curtain. It was akin to the mortified reaction of someone who had accidentally dropped a condom in front of a friend. From then on, my welcome was uncharacteristically silent. I forged ahead into the staging area, sensing the wariness the enemy and I felt for the other. With every leaf of thick foliage brushed aside from my path, an unsavory peeling sound accompanied. Each rip was more poignant than the last as I ducked even further underneath it. I couldn't risk getting caught here. The space was getting rapidly smaller and denser with gore for an eight-foot beast to get away with. From there, I felt the startling crack of my joints priming for something and when I meant to crawl, the conversion into a quadruped took over and navigation became much easier and needless to say . . . jarring.

As I flattened underneath another barrier, I emerged onto an unrecognizable deck. The whole of the drive core had become one big hive for the biomass, its rhythmic thrumming setting all of its carefully splayed piano cords wavering like nerve endings, shaken as every interlocking plate flared outward from the core. It seemed as if even technology could be subject to demonic puppetry, the raw display a taste of annihilation these creatures were capable of. The static blur of the domed canopy was no different: an improvised constellation of a single rune.

 **DOOM**

But my terrible experience with altars drew me to the feature in front of me. A pulsating biomass that defied brutality. Wedged between a femur and the gum-drop remains of a shoe was the grotesquely hilarious face of the corpse from earlier, profuse cheeks bulging out between rendered limbs. All that quickly hissed and smoked until the face melted off and dissolved into the primordial soup.

Honeycombs of sickly green pus oozed out from their dotted boils like the salivation of one great big tongue. Like the nictating eyelid of a reptile cracking open from a sinister slumber, a filmy white sac revolved into existence, the thinly framed structure within depositing goopy mass at its roots, bubbles of acid digestion turning the exterior into the pock-marked surface of the moon. The smell was unlike anything conceivable. My mind betrayed me to the sickening thought of that gore alluding to the shedding flesh of my transformation.

As soon as they sensed my intrusion, the parasites wriggled out of sight within the mass of entrails like eager sperm piercing the shell of an ovarian egg. Demons had a vague fetish for opaque references to aphrodisiacs. I half-expected some undead fetus to be tossed my way at any second.

"No further." I assured them, teeth gnashing away.

My demonic proclivities immediately understood. These were totem poles, living scarecrow sentinels used to claim entire battlefields and no man's lands all across the peninsulas of hell. The endless battles of Tartarus waged to gritty standstills. A warning to all who approached.

I saw the rune being burned into the bloody altar.

Sefir'eyre, Fire's Scorn

Ozone began to tinge the air sour, and my spider-sense of volatile Argent Energy started pinging me ominously. The surge was nigh unpredictable. I averted my gaze as the misshapen arc of flesh exploded into a flash of a miniature blood-red wormhole, what would have easily concussed any normal human.

With a battle cry, I pushed against the blast and plunged my hand deep into its bowels, talons closing around the back of the white sac. Once the hooks had gouged in, the fissure was inevitable. I tore it's smugness clean off its fleshy harness, snapping back every umbilical cord feeding into the sac in less than a second. It then met its end as a flaming fist burst its contents open, flotsam seeping between my greedy fingers and carving swathes down my forearms like veins. The fertilized marker convulsed as if it didn't quite believe my audacity before the air let loose with tortured screams, an amalgam of various voices, the possible subjugation of races long past. A mist of crimson party streamers descended upon me but my already devilish pelt barely afforded me the appearance of sweating profusely.

I shielded away as the entire structure burst outwards in a squelch. The static burst sent every available to console into lock-down. The drive core hissed and sputtered as the blast shield covering the singularity became increasingly unstable.

They were content to bring the whole ship down if their gambit didn't pan out. I despised myself still further and there . . . gladly offering that punishment, were antagonists I had hoped never to see again.

The creature of the wreckage nodded kindly towards me as if this would be no more than a duel. I knew then the purpose of the test offered to me by Father Abbadon. Survive or everybody suffers for your carelessness. The reprimand was clear.

It was only at the close that I'd finally rediscovered my self-preservation protocol.

And **they** knew it too.


	7. Carnage & Containment

**A/N: This is it! The DOOTING you've all been waiting for, something I've been cooking up for some time after the first batch unceremoniously dropped out of the server without saving. Hell, this action scene must've been set to ultra-nightmare difficulty since all my progress was dissolved for the second time so far. Nonetheless, we finally rip and tear into some delicious demon guts, break bones, and take names. Thanks for all the support thus far in my literary rambling and I can now pay it forward and back, one little gory piece at a time.**

 **Enjoy!**

* * *

 **Chapter 7: Carnage & Containment**

 ** _Shuttle ETA to Normandy: 23 minutes_**

 ** __Alpha_Zeta_One_ Threat Level Declared_**

 ** _Life Support Compromised_**

 ** _Tantalus Drive Core Temperature Rising_**

 ** _*Blood Pressure . . . Rising_**

* * *

What was I supposed to do? I had no another choice except to compensate for the circumstances of my . . . rebirth, the wretched one I was indelibly stuck with. As if stepping out of my own body involuntarily wouldn't leave scars.

The simplest way I can describe the ensuing carnage is to say that it wasn't me. It _couldn't_ be me.

I had killed before to survive. Hell, I had no qualms in consuming them as my sole sustenance either but the utter savagery with which I conducted this clinical massacre was beyond all rationale. They'd have rended me limb from limb and gnawed at them like drumsticks given the chance but there was no way Rienfield would have been able to meet that kind of fire with fire.

But to consider that possibility was a rabbit hole too much to bear. No, there was an easy scapegoat, one that lived within me, but to say how much of it accounted for my actions was a margin too small for comfort. The thing about scapegoats is . . . they always save the dirty work of thinking, of reflecting, to justify just about any nasty and despicable actions one was potentially going to make. Hell, if I hadn't thought they deserved it anyway, I might have gone insane, if I wasn't downright loony already.

That was not to say I was some sort of metaphorical strait-jacketed backseat passenger as most stories would say. The experience, for lack of a better term, was akin to a driving evaluator riding shotgun with me and having a wheel of his own. Except, every time I tried to refrain or hold back, the instructor slammed on the gas and yanked on its wheel to ensure every pedestrian had thoroughly plugged the cracks in the asphalt. Where I faltered and missed, the other made corrections to my approach. When the situation was out of my grasp, the other piloted for me.

Oh . . . and the training car happened to be a Mack-Truck.

But this was one hell of an autopilot.

Shapes continually cropped out of the hissing red mist around me, phantom limbs scrabbling at the rim of their demonic toilets, having been flushed into the light. Their milky eyes sneered and glistened as they hoisted their hind legs over the edge. A flash of flame accompanied their various exits when their portals closed. My scrutiny didn't have to last long before the first imp lunged at my eyes. Inhumane reflexes synchronized the timing of the blows to near-synthetic levels of precision. I easily side-stepped the lunge, a paw wrapping around its digitigrade ankle in midair, allowing the forward momentum to swing it back and around, sling-shotting the imp's neck into the bulkhead above before breach-kicking it off the bridge, spine audibly snapping against the metallic clang of the metal rungs as it tumbled into the engine chamber, dead on arrival. The decapitated head fell moments later at my feet.

 _And so the tone of the encounter is set._ I stepped back and surveyed the situation without feeling.

Problem was, the hell spawn were right at home within the cramped quarters, lending to their frenzied mob techniques: Overwhelm the enemy with enormous force but without tactic whatsoever like an inexorable wave. They didn't need to. Their armies were so limitless that the term 'cannon fodder' had ceased to have all meaning. The powers that be were no more aware of their foot soldiers than the bacteria in a human's gut. The contingency force sent to hold the ship was not, however. The conduit of Argent Energy couldn't sustain so many. These seemed confused by the lack of roaming available to mount their attacks. Some were forced to duck to avoid the corridor ceiling, effectively forcing them into a stooped bottleneck, a mass of snarling limbs, skulls, and biting coals for eyes.

The momentary delay to their onslaught offered by the environment gave me enough pause to act on the strange sensation building in my gut. Had I been human, I would have thought the rumble was the overriding urge to shit in terror. No, this was different. Instead of vacating less than sinister bowels, it was Argent plasma, corrupting the air with static energy. I mapped out my surroundings, saw the course of power flowing through the synthetic veins bolted into the wall. My instinct was rebuffed when I tried to articulate, to bend this foreign power to my own and I had the strange impression that this energy was crude, illiterate, and untamable as if Argent had a mind of its own, could be grafted to the user better than mere electricity. So much waste, diffusing hopelessly into unusable forms.

No, I had to find another way but the instructor had already figured it out for me. An avatar of me stretched monstrously far apart. I had only a glimpse, an inference of this form, feeling inanimate fingers searching and feeling along for the power cords and picking at a junction experimentally. I deposited some of my energy into overloading the structure and the reaction was instantly obtuse.

The effect was so violent that the dust took a few seconds to dissipate even with it being subtly sucked into the ship's core. When the black, acrid smoke wafted away, the scene was pure evisceration. The electrical pipes along the corridor had bent outwards at multiple junctures, creating a mosaic of entangled tubes that skewered every demon eager enough to be in the impact area. Seeing that the pipes were furling pure energy to and from the core, it created a momentary arc flash of electricity between their shattered partners, thereby jumping to the impaled beings. The few left alive in the aftermath hissed weakly at me, groping fruitlessly at me in obscene gestures as bile and blood poured forth from their mouths.

As I held in a breath I realized I hadn't taken, I reflexively exhaled and the pressure in my gut dissipated. The glorified shish-kebobs snapped violently and perfectly back into place, taking their pieces of brisket and peppers along for the ride, trapping the demons into the walls gruesomely. I felt the instant drain on my being, the debt of energy reminding me that interest was going to be hell to pay if not managed properly.

Stepping forward, I idly brushed aside assorted chunks floating in a soup of blood with curled toe talons, sweeping back and forth in threatening approximations. The grating shriek of metal made the remaining survivors scurry back slowly and bare their teeth. Their sudden reluctance to attack by the fate of their comrades gave me immense satisfaction.

One brave imp charged head-on, as if to rally the rest with his audacity. In a sprint like a freight train, I met the challenge head-on. A fist struck straight into the gut and I could have easily ravaged the internal organs and incapacitate it but no, the demon demanded more. The imp visibly heaved, mouth cracked open for air but recovering momentarily to scrabble at my neck and throat as I both struck and grabbed with the hay-maker. A glowing fist enveloped the skull and thrust slashing teeth to the floor, its wriggling legs held fast above its torso in a noose with the other hand. The imp was stunned but this was still not satisfactory. Pivoting slightly as if it were no more than shucking crab legs, I relieved the imp of its own. The sound, both its hoarse screaming and the ripe tearing of flesh, offered little consolation. As if some kind of mercy could stifle these brutal debridings, I stamped decisively into its skull with a foot and sensing the feeble resistance of bone, lent the true weight behind the curb stomp, crushing its head into the pulp that poured between my talons; completely unrecognizable.

An example doesn't dissuade hell spawn so easily. They modified their strategy, now refraining to bunch up together but herein resulted in another one of their mistakes. Coming at me one at a time.

I took advantage, tossing one limb at a mottled imp that lunged into the air, knocking its trajectory off and sending it sprawling into the grating, face-down. I grabbed hold of its throat and repeatedly beat its face into the floor until it was sheathed and oozing between the metal gaps. Another tried to flank, exchanging wall after wall as it ran. The flaying was inevitable. Where once I had seen their advance with the sensation of dread, my eye perceived everything as if it were begging to be evaded. The limb functioned as a bat, striking it away to the floor. Tossing the club aside with a soft clang, I rushed forward and stomped a crater into its chest, snapping through the ribs as if they were no more than dry twigs. It spat venomously at me but with my first forceful cry, I kicked the reeling imp into a stack of crates.

I had been so paranoid, so terrified, wondering when even a single one took notice of me back in Inferno. Now, they were nothing more than distractions.

From then on, I faced the obscure, whirling on my next victim. It seemed my strategy was to rack up the body parts to use like chairs in a wrestling match. The cadence of the battle had synchronized every blow, heightening my focus. Nictating eyelids blinked once as I spotted the subtle shift into an aiming stance of a demon I had only observed from far away before, one that looked like a humanoid pile of ashen rocks had been given lava to boil throughout its body like thick veins. My unsettled skin seemed to bristle in warning at the coalescing of Argent Energy in its carved stump of an arm. I acted on impulse, combing the ground for something to use and settling upon a headless imp.

Side-stepping the initial blast, I smothered the laser, launching the decapitated imp straight into its arms. The stream was knocked upward as it tumbled, welding through the tubery and cables, causing sparks to fly and pipes to come crashing down on top of it, exposing the loathsome tripe housed within. The cords seemed to have a life of their own, having been stuck in one position like rolled up garden hoses that they actively rebelled against their unnatural circumstances, flopping violently past one another until it was satisfied by the entanglement.

Yet another brainless imp tried to hop away from the shuffling pieces and ended up forced to do a balancing act before tripping up the cadence and getting crushed between the pillars. The housing PVC didn't reach far into the bridge what with its size unable to fit through the narrow passage. The battlefield had been leveled even further.

The other ones, the ones that took longer to spawn, had failed to manifest in time to pry the memo out of their fallen comrades. My brief moment of hesitation nearly became my downfall. Climbing sultrily out of a space-time tear was a face the human in me had hoped would never see again. The being crashed to the floor, its purple musculature flaring outward in its compressed landing as if it had been beaten a bruised tattoo. It's bulbous, pale head cocked to the side and upon massive digitigrade legs, it's wide nostrils flared in brief contemplation, rising to its feet slowly. The Hell Knight clacked its teeth and croaked repeatedly, sauntered forward some more and then its sightless gaze suddenly settled on me.

For the first time, I understood it's low grunt, serrated the only way a harsh, illiterate member could achieve. _Nak'tyn_. The slur was a cry born of revenge and contempt.

I only heard the monotone cymbal of pipe rustling along the grates before the Hell Knight lashed out with its weapon. I raised my forearm to block the blinding whip, only to lower it and find a glistening trench rippling through it. The damage was done so swiftly that the body took a second to realize the extent of the wound and begin to bleed. The limb was numb and even as I lowered it, I became alarmingly aware of the shadow of the leaping Knight washing over me.

I knew I had no time to evade, and even if I did, the resulting Shock wave would stun me and I would be minced meat. Instead, the driving instructor stood his ground for this tactic, one I had seen and been subject to earlier. Almost in obtuse rebellion of its stance, I braced with the opposite shoulder and bent, a bladed knee gently kissing the floor as I half-knelt in odd submission.

The timing was something no human could foresee. That brief few milliseconds of a window offered to me became my counterattack as I launched abruptly into a bear-hug with the minion, using its force to toss it behind me and side-wind it into the core's railing. The spinning made me tumble to the floor even as sparks flew from my bone-like talons to break the downward spiral. I caught myself and nearly rallying on four legs, charged into the being and together, we tumbled over the precipice.

I sought to smother the steeling jaws as I reached for a vat of pus-like webbing and thrust it into the maw of beast, a force-feeding of its own medicine. The Knight visibly gagged and its gut undulations nearly threw me off with its massive rippling. I scored and scoured what I could, desperate to keep it occupied and off balance. If I was lucky, I could choke it death.

Rapidly, it gulped it down and venomously spat the white paste into my eyes. The smell was worse anything but having it leak into your eyes is doubly worse. I cried out and the demon unseated me. For a few blood-curdling moments, I fought blind with only a heightened vestibular sense to feel my way along. It reached for a limb to pry off, I denied it with a smart rap. When it sought to knock my teeth out, I socked it in the femoral artery, nearly succeeding in pulling the plug.

Thus, I began to "see" the advantage of nictating eyelids. Like windshield wipers, it actively thrust out the underlying particles with the underlying fleshy flap. It was a soft, rolling motion that I was hitherto unfamiliar with. I wasn't blinking, not really per say. It had the odd quality of rolling up into my skull and emerging into being like a curtain was constantly rising on my vision. Nevertheless, it was a thorough purge and I was back on even ground.

As we rapidly exchanged blows and each forfeited valuable positions, wrestling for the upper hand, the human part of me idly began to ponder some of my father's teachings. In slow motion, I calmly observed the Hell Knight thrashing at bay; body and neck stretched and strained and kicked and writhed and salivated at the chance to consume me. As all of its rabid snarling and teeth clacking rattled in my ears, a perturbing nugget of wisdom wormed in:

 _"Sure, anybody can hit hard enough if they want to with their convictions, but the one thing that separates the losers from the winners . . . is the ability to knock yourself out of that shock when the first blow inevitably lands on you. Grit your teeth and if you're still standing after that brow-beating, you got yourself a chance. You survive that . . . and the rest is history."_

Nobody had ever cared enough to sock it to me, not even my old man. Wasn't worth the effort, it seemed. Too intimate an embrace, to brush aside reason and focus on the sensation of punishment. They all limply refrained, possibly an endemic symptom of modern-day disassociation, such that we simply resorted to droll platitudes to do the talking for us.

But that time, that first blow, had come. The bone-cracking head-butt of the knight, a crude but effective strike, sent stars sailing over me. That razor-like nick of teeth lunging on my throat, threatening to thrash me around like a rag-doll, suddenly became a moment of truth, the chance to prove the power of our convictions.

I saw the dynamic abyss of the beast's nostrils, blaring and snorting like a bitch in heat. I broke through its pinning grasp and shoved a finger gun straight up the tunnel. I brushed something vital and the beast nearly leapt into the air, howling. Like twisting the blade of a sword in the gut of the enemy, I scraped what brain matter I could, shattered through olfactory bulbs, and probed resolutely in a distinctly Egyptian vivisection. Its whining struggle served to ravage the area even further and mercifully, I tore those dexterous human fingers from their impromptu sockets. Blood poured from its orifice and the being clutched its wounded sense organ, stumbling backwards and in stupefied terror, barreled into the core. My eye caught the unstable shifting of the blast shield over the nuclear fusion core from the tremor of that blow.

It was as if a plan, a fate was being exacted on each foe pitilessly. A hand shot out to muffle the throat straining in vain and I dragged the hemorrhaging demon along with me, the other hand hoisting myself up along the core.

I felt the radiation tugging at my molecules, corrupting the Argent Energy in me. Still, I climbed, each tectonic plate a hand-hold. I finally settled for purchase onto the tubery sticking out of the top which was funneled into the dark ceiling like a synthetic tree. The weight of the weakly struggling humanoid became an insult. It's pitiful whines and whimpers remained only something to scratch out of my skull like the sand that was once stuck under my fingernails.

With the same merciless jackhammer of blows, I rammed the skull into the metal, felt every twitch of life being extracted with each crushing blast. The bloody and seeping plate loosened just enough to force the Hell Knight's skull into the radiation storm within. God knows what horrors it had seen in that keyhole as it briefly cried out in surprise and fell silent.

My painfully stiff fingers seemed to realize the sudden lack of struggle and slowly . . . I released their tense hold on the dangling corpse. I might as well have been battling an erection because the appendages resisted in obeying my commands.

A Knight No More plummeted to the floor like a sack before settling into a slump, its headless body cradled peacefully by the curved chamber. It's stump had been scoured so thoroughly by the nuclear bombardment that blood had no outlet. It was a done in a manner that one could delude themselves into thinking the being had always been like that. The kill was surprisingly bloodless.

Even though I knew oxygen was not a requirement, my lungs strained heavily for want of breath, possible more to satisfy established psychological constructs than for practicality's sake.

This was supposed to be my moment of triumph, of confronting something I had feared, that in the same hand had saved my life and threatened to take it all away in that pit. With a cry, my perch was disturbed as an invisible body slammed into my side, knocking me into the wall of the chamber. I ducked as an arc of argent plasma sliced the air above me. I scrambled to my feet, hopping between the curved flooring and vaulted back onto the catwalk, thrusting my aching body forward as another blade of swishing energy hummed over my head.

I heard two clatters. The first I wholeheartedly knew was the bars balking under my massive weight. The other reverberated to a standstill in front of me, sizzling acridly. Something my body instantly recognized as its own, the horn.

Now, I know how the late rhinos must have felt. It's easy for a human to misconstrue this seemingly inorganic appendage as nothing more than a fancy car accessory. The sub-surface connections are silent to the eyes of onlookers, it's dullness indicative of lifelessness, it's pallor and rigidity lacking the same relentless movement as the rest of the straining body. But in the brief time I had carried the implanted one in my skull, I was enslaved to it's minute haughtiness, its demands and little petty discomforts. I was acutely aware of them and when I found a half-stump of a horn hissing up at me in front of my eyes, I rose in contemptuous anger and agony like it were a kick in the balls.

I strained my innate sixth sense to search out my attacker. One that was actively using Guerrilla Tactics to wound me, effectively so. I searched for the corruption in the air and my inner eye settled upon a rolling mass like a blood cloud hovering over the bridge. I was thrust back into cover as it assailed my position. It was hiding in plain sight, a vaguely lithe form made from a red cloud, surrounded by nanites of Argent Energy to suspend it. I saw the paint trail of heat it was leaving behind, bright red. I blinked and the effect realized itself onto my visual display.

It was probably sentimentality that caused me to scoop up the horn fragment. God knows they were an odd and fickle thing to live with. I took cover behind a crate as another humming band of energy slashed at the ropes, a fire igniting among the crates. I stumbled back onto my ass and the resulting noise successfully muffled the sound of the approaching demon looming at my back.

Suddenly, my throat was swept up into a crushing embrace as the recognizably deep undertones of another Hell Knight huffed and growled behind me. It slowly but surely lifted my feet off the ground, even as my toe talons scratched white lines along the fenced catwalk. I kicked at a neighboring console, boosting the aggressor and myself into another. My elbow came and buried itself into the gut of the beast repeatedly before I was able to extricate myself from its grasp. I saw the next wave of Argent Energy aimed at me, and I cuffed the Knight by the non-existent ears and redirected the being as I spun overhead, with the aid of the dangling struts, to propel me on it's backside. I kicked the spine into the awaiting sickle of heat. I clutched at my throat trying to regain some sort of working order to my constricted windpipes. A dirty, wet cough coincided nicely with the sizzle of the limp Hell Knight. For a moment, it seemed frozen . . .

Just before it's two halves tumbled apart and squished onto the floor. Its bisected guts spilled out onto the floor, its pierced tongue flickering sickeningly as the brains shuffled out in a putrefying ooze like a worm emerging from its den.

I finally caught a glimpse of the being in real-time and it looked frighteningly similar to the figureheads in that worshiping chamber. Like a Hell Knight, but if it had been given a thinly stricken body. No eyes but evolved way beyond the need for echolocation. It relied on Hell Energy which arced through its talons, shaping the fuse into a mass that summoned a dark red mist. The same one that dissolved out of the spliced Hell Knight.

It was summoning reinforcements, and I would be quickly overrun. A trio of imps dashed towards me, managing to draw blood from a swipe that glanced by my shoulder. In anger, I reached for two and yanked at their legs in midair, clapping them together in front of me with head-busting force. The other leapt onto my back, obscuring my vision as it crawled over me like an overgrown spider. It bit and clawed at me as I wedged my fingers underneath its constricting embrace. I forced open the stranglehold, snapping its calf as I thrust a foot into its retreating backside. It crumbled to the floor, propping itself up as it bobbed up and down, wounded. It wasn't long before my heel crushed through it's skull as it limped, head shattering and bathing the adjacent wall in gore.

I barely sidestepped an arc flash as another burst of flame lit up a console. Ferro-fluid leaked out of the circuitry and it too caught a maelstrom of fire and electricity . . . consuming all along its breadth, denying me the little space left to maneuver. It was time to clip this bastard's wings.

I felt the relentless buzz in my bones from just my sheer proximity to this force. I had to pin it down for good. It wasn't interloping, it was always on the run. As if construing this as simple exercise in hand-eye coordination, I dashed in preparation and lunged in the general direction of the being, hoping it would take the bait.

Sure enough, it sent another bolt at me. But I had adopted the form I had only recently become aware of. An inanimate mist I could phase in and out of. One that mapped out the Summoner in what looked like Sonar but was really a real-time biofeedback of radiation being shot across the room and processed in near milliseconds.

I evaded the toss and threw a hook into the side of the being's gaunt jaw, a hay-maker baring my knuckles to a mist of ejected saliva and broken teeth. Both of us phased back into our earthly forms as the Summoner tumbled and spun onto the cat-walk.

Landing resolutely in a brief kneel to absorb the impact, I strode forward and slowed when I saw there was no need to hurry. The Summoner hissed at me and crawled away but it seemed too stunned to return to mist. I scooped up the piece of horn I dropped and marched toward the being threateningly, repeatedly tossing and catching the appendage in sweet, sweet foreshadowing.

"Where the hell do you think you're going?" A foot clamped down on the retreating figure without restraint. Another settled onto its gut and its pitiful struggles and thin, gasping body reminded me of a beached fish, somersaulting in the hopes of being swept back into the tide.

I grasped it's oddly shaped skull, its hammer-head shark like structure lending to its limp coat-hanger appearance. I raised it to mere inches from my hard, steely gaze as if somehow I could impart a lesson to my foe before it departed from this and all worlds. The blow came swiftly. I shoved the horn deep into its gurgling throat, prying the channel wide and wider until the unrecognizable tip burst open on the other side.

"That's for taking my horn, you ugly sonuva bitch."

The being's jaw worked and articulated but ultimately remained silent, it's furtive eyes stilling into a milky grey. I fed the body to the flames and listened intently to the crackle of its pasty body, settling into a cross-legged pose, clutching at my trembling knees. Besides the flame and the sparks and the blood boiling in my ears, a tenous calm was established.

I watched forlornly as the flames crept closer and the alarm blared. The fire suppression system seemed to have been corrupted by its brawlers, a vain clicking the only indication of its intended operation.

The fire's quivering roots stretched out, lusting for another meal to consume. The weight of what I had just done crashed down upon me. I became aware of the the blood and gore coating my slick body. How it pooled intimately around my groin, and trickled from my calves. My elbow shot little spurts now and then with the speed the blood had gained from the angle of the spout.

Just one swipe at the console and I could reset the protocol, but my body, which had been pushed to its optimum condition to hell and back, was suddenly reluctant to go one step further.

The fire remained the last thing to sort out. Being an engineer in a past life, I didn't dare observe the havoc wreaked across the room, the logistical nightmare this situation presented to _people_ I used to be. Hell, if I were still Human, this would have been _my_ headache to deal with.

Without feeling, I glanced up at the stuttering extinguishers before probing for the console interface I was slumped against.

Impatience got the better of me and I raised an index finger above me, willing heat into a smoking virus and transmitting it upwards into the hairline pipes that made up the system. It gurgled and choked momentarily before rain offered its much-needed cleansing to this hallowed room.

I bared my throat to the shower, let it rinse through my teeth and painfully but pleasantly trickle through my sensitive horn stump. I watched as the glistening edge to my hellish skin faded away and the mats of honeycombed webbing washed into the lone drainage valve. Lazily, I scooped up the alien bio-matter gingerly with a talon before it clogged the port, creating a growing mound in front of me as I monotonously fished for gore. In peaceful resignation, I set about mashing up the bulbous growths into a paste and subsequently shuffling it back into the stream, as if I were releasing a rescued seal back into the wild.

Good fucking riddance.

I cradled the horn in my arms, deeply reluctant to part with it. Won't be able to glue it back on willy-nilly. I needed to store it for safe-keeping. Something gave me the impression I had all the tools necessary to accomplish that. Demons could phase in and out of hell provided there was a conduit. Maybe I could make my own.

I extended the horn out in front of me, and willed myself to picture my old hideout in Hell, a place I had gotten intimately familiar with in my abject boredom. My reluctance was only abated by the fact that it had been caved in and removed the threat of someone, some _thing_ , reaching out on the other side . . . . to pull me back in.

Finally, I let the object fall from my grasp, expecting a clang but hearing nothing. The ripple was gone and so was the horn. With a sigh, I retracted the outstretched limb and let myself bask in the extinguisher's good grace for a few moments longer, unwittingly bringing a passenger along for the ride. Through the numbness, I felt a sharp itch and my eye flew upon to a glimpse of something green perched on my forearm. Naturally, I flinched, brushing it off with a startled cry.

Lying belly-up and scuttling it's loathsome legs in the air was one of the parasites that started this whole debacle. It succeeded in flipping over it's bulbous abdomen and pivoted to face me, rubbing it's hind-legs together in what seemed to be haughty distaste. It commenced it's approach once again and I struck out with a pad of a foot, sending it careening into the grating and out of sight.

"And that's that."

I subsequently wished I hadn't said that. The piles of entrails littered across the room began to twitch and unravel as if they had a life of their own. Some shifted from their place ominously. Intestines dangled between the grating and the erratic movement ceased just as quickly as it had begun and all was still again. Intuition told me this wasn't some fluke or rough-shod slipping of gore over gore as I scrambled to my feet.

I waited breathless before I heard the squelching starting up again.

Some of the organic tubery began to bulge outwards like green beans, little balls scooting along intestinal tracts. The little mounds were one by one dismantled by little hints of legs feeling out between tight gaps. The Hell Knight's split carcass twitched and the two halves of brain were shoved out of their cradle entirely. Lungs began to get punctured from within. Livers oozed bile and saliva. Kidney's lay face up with their blood filters dangling in the air.

 _Oh, Dear God! NO!_

Upon later reflection, I was astonished that I wasn't immolated on the spot by my headlong blasphemy. A demon praying to God? No wonder the world was so off-kilter.

There was a collective effort brewing underneath the carnage and I began to dawn on the horrible fate I was going to suffer. In the spoils of my victory, parasitic eggs were incubating as a consequence to my eagerness and they were beginning to awaken. A palpable chorus of chittering began to start up. I was frozen momentarily as those devastating arachnids shed their little ecosystems and made a beeline straight for me, tumbling down from their perches. A slight metallic clang snapped off between my legs as more creeped up from the grating, beady eyes all fixed on me. I felt them begin to scale my calves and I shook them off, grunting outright in my distress.

The hellfires had died out in me and there was little I could do. The more I squashed them like rotten pumpkins, the more my vision began to deteriorate and the harder it was to breathe. I tumbled on my hands and knees and the parasites surged onward, scaling up my limbs deftly. I picked them off desperately from my limbs but the onslaught became too much. When I gained some sort of head-way in shooing them off, another batch dropped down from the ceiling and scrabbled over my back.

I hissed sharply and like I was on fire, I rushed headlong into a bulkhead, exchanging walls for one another across Engineering with a bang as my maw worked in terror. I squashed and shook off a few when I realized they too began to deliberately plunge down my gullet. I tried to catch what fell through the cracks with my teeth but the acrid burning in the flesh made me hack and retch horribly and grow increasingly weak. When enough sense bled into my mind to shut it, they found other ways, clambering around on my maw and dropping down the chute that was my over-sized nostrils. Others obscured my vision and thrust aside my eyelids like a trapdoor, bleeding through the flaps. There was no stopping them.

I swept the infestation apart as I swatted away blindly, plunging into another electric console. I relished the flair of electricity for the brief respite it gave me but for the first time since the fight began, I howled in unbridled terror.

The little horde did not discriminate between orifices as they peeled apart my unguarded bowels and pushed through in the most uncomfortable violation I had ever experienced. Just when I had begun to feel powerful in conquering my past aggressors I had feared, I was brought straight back down to rock-bottom.

I clenched in more ways than one but that only resulted in more agony. _Submit,_ they all seemed to chitter. I shook my head, refusing to give in. The battle between my two halves raged on demonstrably . . . but there were some things out there I shouldn't. I was fighting the nature of what this body was, this puppet I had been exchanged for. I had to let go but the human part grasped hold, pleading. If I was to survive this torture, I had to surrender and let another reign supreme.

But how could I? That would mean accepting what I had become, to give in to all the intricacies that made this demonic body go. It operated on these little organic machines and without them, my death was assured. Like it or not, I was a slave to the machinations of the demonic life cycle, from the bowels of a bloodbath to the emergence of the nest to the molding and reanimation of new life, all played a role in the struggle to survive.

Because what are demons but plain organisms? Fantastic, nigh unbelievable titans capable of withstanding enormous heat, but they roved for the same thing as any other. A way to continue the species and this happened to be their unfortunate, cursed reason for the wanton slaughter. So I served my place in this hierarchy or died.

So I had my choice. Self-preservation, something I thought I had discarded forever in a bullet aimed at my brain, soon began its resurgence. Slowly, painfully, I let my fists dissipate to my sides and the torrent that resulted nearly gave me a lockjaw. I was eviscerated by sensation as the little parasites dove into Argent Vents, pockmarking my peeled, skinless body. Every sensation came alive as the insects rumbled in me, deftly navigating through their manholes and evading organs as they marched to man their stations.

Soon, I felt the surge of unbridled and unrefined power flare through my fingertips once again. My hatred towards these things, the self-loathing it inevitably led to would always remain but right now, I had to remain aware. I would deal with controlling their insubordination later.

A little clang echoed behind me and I idly turned to see what guts had lost their adhesion to the wall. Grimacing over-sized teeth in an approximation of a frown, I scooped up a shiny object on the catwalk, something I swore hadn't been there before, but was nonetheless in danger of falling through the cracks. It wasn't my horn.

In my bewilderment, I realized what had materialized was a wristwatch. My Wristwatch. And I believed I left it non-functional back in hell. Jesus, the thing had fallen off a cliff but here it was. It was a software graveyard. Nothing worked and I was about to toss it away as if it were some kind of wayward prank call from hell except when I noticed a blinking blue light.

A new message. Dated a second ago. The message had no sender address or subject line. It simply read. "Good work. You proved your will to survive but have they? A hell wave is about to decimate all your good-will. I trust you catch my meaning. The fate of the Normandy will be decided in 3 minutes."

And the hologram cut to a count-down. My blood froze.

"FUCK!" The watch shattered in my hands, hemorrhaging gears and spare parts, fizzling smoke. I let it spread like ashes, tossing it aside as I lunged to my feet.

 _A Lazarus Event!? Here? But that would trigger a damn apocalypse! These were the words that inspired fear in every "advocate" for the UAC. If the rumours about it were true, it could turn every living soul on this ship into mindless, voracious husks in a heartbeat. I can't let that happen._

I concentrated on taking a breath, letting the steam rise from my nostrils as I calmed the sub-dermal argent vents bristling along my musculature.

 _Jesus Christ, Rienfield! Think! Okay, the hell wave has to be composed of Argent Plasma. It might emit a unique signal I could isolate. Wouldn't hurt to try._

Every biological attenuation, every sense, strained to sift through loads of biofeedback. Again, I was frustrated by failure. Mixed signals pinged off every surface, a jarring bombardment of echoes so strong that I was forced to cut off the connection. Corridors, vents, pipes, access lifts, all gave me false readings . . . and I had just cost precious few seconds the crew had remaining.

Just then, I began to hear signs of combat echoing behind the walls. Fingertips grazed along the bulkhead, tracing, searching, for where the reverberations led.

Life Support, of course. This couldn't be all of them.

Without delay, I phased into a storm and hurtled back the same way I arrived, emerging back onto the crew deck in the midst of the silent battery. The sounds of gunfire were much louder. The doors parted to reveal even further carnage. The fighting had been taken out into the dining hall. Seats were charred and punctured, smoothies had spilled their strawberry guts onto the floor. I felt around for the little Argent Fracture, the little blight that was about to spill its terrible guts over the entire ship. I sensed its pulsating heart-beat, its systolic and diastolic motion rising and falling out of the ambient radiation. I locked on to it's unique signature and the signal was coming . . . from the Med-bay.

 _Really, Wasn't I just there already?_

Had I been afforded the luxury of examination, I would have noted the suspicion that fact arose.

Blood and shrapnel coated the floor and it was impossible to tell whether it was human or demon or both. I desperately hoped it was the latter but considering my own struggles, I wondered if the crew would even stand a chance if this continued to progress. I dropped back out of the mist, slamming down onto the catwalk and I heard a few stuttering shouts of surprise. A few soldiers lay slumped around the hall, too weak to stand.

I had to close myself off to the suffering. All I could do to help them now was by ending the threat so they can bring in the medical Calvary safely. I waved a thumb into the console but it remained locked, flashing a red angry reticle into my retinas.

I glanced around, zeroing in on a soldier with the necessary clearance dangling from his ammunition satchel. I approached the terminally wounded man with nearly half his torso gouged out, cracked helmet dangling limply from his fingertips. His back lay against a kitchen counter-top and in my approach, I could smell the fear wafting up over the blood and liquor. It wasn't death or grievous bodily harm or the unknowable afterlife that made him scoot away limply in terror and induced his pupils to dilate and compelled his sphincter to clench. In the midst of being offered _REAL_ reasons to fear, there was room enough in that skull to dread _me._

"So you've come to finish the job."

I felt the barrel of a pistol thrust into the crick between my skull and partially exposed spine. The jostling of small arms echoed all around me as a security guard plucked the keycard from my fingertips.

"Vakarian, you have no clue what the hell you are doing." I grunted as my arms were loosely locked behind me and I was directed to turn around to face the one who got the drop on me.

"Oh, I think I do. Scared civilian, my leathery backside! You just faked your ticket in here and we allowed it. Same way, we let you run around, infest the ship, disable us so we're dead in the water, and now, you've come here to ensure your detonation goes off without a hitch. I found your little gift to us and no, I'm not letting you take us without a fight."

I followed where his bird-like gaze settled and saw the guards already rifling through the room, tossing and prying their way across the med-bay.

In the best approximation of assertive imploring that I could achieve with an outstretched jaw, I said, "You let your men blunder around with that device and we're all doomed. Call off your dogs, Vakarian. They have no clue what could set off an Argent Fracture and we'll be facing an eruption not unlike the one that sheared the top off Mount Vesuvius. It's mines and mines alone to fix." In the midst of this, I eyed the soldiers moving through the shutter of the med-bay, searching haphazardly.

"The only thing you should be concerned about is atoning for all the lives you lost today!"

I grasped the alien by the scruff of his wide-brimmed collar, barely budging when the guards tried to pry off my stone grip on his throat. "You listen close, you high and mighty, peacock bastard. A lot more bloodshed is inevitable if I don't get that dirty bomb off the ship. You're putting your crew in danger. Believe me when I say I will not relish the time when you guys are ripping each other's throats out. I'd tell you it's a misunderstanding but there's no time to explain, damn it!"

"You managed to get the captain to believe your sob story but it won't fool me. Whatever coup your fiends are hatching, it ends here."

In my impatience, I let a snarl ripple through my chest and palpably vibrate the air with it's intensity, enough to give the guards pause. "Release me, Vakarian. Now. Or things get ugly."

"You know, I've gotten that same threat now so many times from warlords and drug kingpins. Yours is bound to slip out of my head."

 _So that settles it then._

With a single arm, I tossed Vakarian against the cabinets as if this were no more than a basic bench press, knocking china from their perches in a crashing cacophony. I whirled on the guards, knocking off the aim of one and using his tight grasp on the weapon to pull him headlong into my waiting skull. The head-butt stunned him hopelessly out of commission but then I felt reflexes directing me to use him as a shield just as I had done with the unwitting Hell Knight. However, I also observed the other uniform raise his weapon too soon to clear the line of friendly fire. This being in me did not discriminate between targets and it was going to get an innocent killed. There was no time to evade. I simply lowered the reeling human off it's trajectory as a shotgun shell blew into the right side of my chest, staggering me back with its sheer force.

" _SON OF A BITCH!"_ I howled in utter rage. The gap in my exposed ribs only served to infuriate me as I tossed the unconscious body at his comrade, sending them both tumbling.

A guttural cry burst out near me and I felt a sudden burden grapple around me by the neck. I tried to shake off the crazy, comparably diminutive turian as he scrabbled over my massive frame. He stabbed relentlessly with a combat knife, indiscriminate as he poked further slits into my chest, hoping to reach heart as blood flew rapidly from my gut and steamed my groin. I felt every wound as if it were a burn, with little bits of Argent Energy lost to the open air.

I reached a massive paw over my back and in my brutal luck, my fingers managed to wedge within the crook of a mandible, serving to yank the helpless and howling turian up and over to met the cold floor with such momentum, that the cracked body temporarily lifted off the ground before rolling to a stop against the counter.

And still clutched between my fingers, like an office shredder choking on paper entrails, was the flickering remains of an insectial mouthpart. I blinked in sudden awareness and dropped the appendage in a fright.

The turian crawled backwards on his elbows, making such a sorrowful keening sound, that it began to drive me insane as I dawned on the repercussions of my actions. A three-fingered taloned hand tried to obscure the hideousness I had bared to the world but the gap between it's forefinger and opposable thumb revealed one constant theme: carnage.

Gone were the proud plates and intricate tattoos that once wove through his geometric face. Now, the cobalt bled into the melting remains of the alien's predatory jaw, having been seared so thoroughly that the plates were nowhere to be found, if not trickling from between his clutching fingers.

I looked at my hands in horror which still seethed with the blazing heat I had unwittingly utilized. In abject shame, I averted my infernal gaze from the spoils of my costly victory. I couldn't think. I didn't have the luxury or the stomach for it, not even for an apology as I stepped over his weakened form. Nothing could make up for the horrors I had committed in the last half-hour alone. I felt his talons reach out for my ankles, searching for purpose in some cruel attempt to make me pause, to make me turn around and see what my newfound powers had borne.

I shrugged off the straining appendage almost vindictively as I burst into the med-bay, casting aside guard after guard in a stupor, setting sights immediately upon my old body-bag. Stuffed within was a package of Argent Energy imbued and consecrated so powerfully with blood trials and the demonic pentagram of the nine circles of hell that it could summon the hell wave that brings about doomsday.

I scooped up the charge and fled, fled from myself into the starboard observation lounge, sealing an emergency lock into place behind me. Staring back out at me was the embittered and yawning maw of space. The flare of the sun creeping over the edge of the Mar's horizon sharpened a razor edge in my heart.

I kicked and pummeled the glass, infusing as much heat into my cutting power as possible and the cracks came but not fast enough. I was desperate, I was deaf from the blood roaring in my ears so pure robotics took over.

The air was rank with the dissipation of energy. and when that primer disappeared, it was game over. I bashed, I beat, I raged against the light, the sun's rays washing over me. The hologram was corrupted and still I hacked on until the dominoes were set.

 _Looks like I'm gonna get my wish after all._

 _ **3 . . .**_

A mysterious smile crept up over my maw, a little snort that acknowledged the absurd breadth of my brief tenure as a demonic puppet. Nothing could survive vacuum and so with that piece of mind, I hoped that in that void, wherever it took my ashes many years from now, my soul would be free.

 _The greatest ending anybody could ask for an unremarkable engineer. I only wished I'd said- . . ._

I never did get to finish that sentence. The mirror on my horrible reflection was cut and I was pulled into that stream. There, I spun into the void as ice chilled my lungs and the void systematically extracted all the water and air from my very bones like a well-oiled machine. I felt my atoms fall into disarray as molecules fell apart into chaos, bombarded and purged mercilessly by radiation; everything that bonded this body together. If there was sound in space, I would probably hear the cry of the parasites as they too succumbed to the clinical procedure of space.

 _ **2 . . .**_

In my addled but still conscious mind, I thought of how sad a watchman Space must be. How it must sense all this traffic moving through its bloodstream and finds to it's shock that it's purpose is null and void. A reminder of how much we strayed, a scapegoat for all the world to escape to. There was supposed to be the only life, the _only_ planet but we moved on and we didn't get the joke. It's lack of hospitality was payed no mind and we allowed ourselves the gluttony of consuming more than one world. And so the watchmen finds itself unable to enforce anything except to administer the Coup de grâce for those at the mercy of transient beings. We were never meant to go this far, probe this deep, and now, we have put space and time at our mercy, our slaves. It's nice that the watchmen can reaffirm his natural duties once in a while over the rightful casualties of a species' collective greed and ambition.

 _ **1 . . .**_

There was no time when I fell asleep. Nothing from back then except the light that graced me ahead. Maybe there was a heaven for me after all or maybe it was the hell wave ripping through my body. It didn't matter.

It was over and I could die happily for it. So I closed my eyes and drifted into that good night.

 ** _Good Fucking Riddance._**

* * *

 _A/N: This happens to be my first ever exercise in writing active combat, something I had delayed and delayed in doubt I could ever get it right. In the end, you are the judges and I appreciate your feedback all the same. I had fun pouring my soul into doing this and seeing how far I can push the envelope. And so I hope I succeeded in not just translating but capturing the spirit of the game._

 _Cheers!_


	8. Oblivion

A/N: I can't believe it's been so long. Really, the response from the previous chapter has been unprecedented. So thanks.

Suffice it to say, this chapter has been the most iterative of all despite a clear idea where I was going . . . so sorry in advance for the multiple perspective switches. I tried to run with a certain theme and style for this chapter, hence the title, and some intentional lack of clarity but it ran amok somewhere. I'm no good at subtlety or writing Mass Effect characters it seems. I might have just made a hot mess of everything but I guess you guys are hoping for a little bit of that. As always, you be the judge.

 ***Update 3/27** : I noticed a lot of confusion for this chapter and I realized that the freaking line breaks had not been preserved. I swear, the fanfiction editor keeps it temporarily and then cuts it when I'm not looking. It's happened twice already and I kind of wish the formatting when published wasn't so strict. Breaks should help with transitions.

Content-wise, PM me and I will endeavor to clear up some things. As the sole writer, this chapter made perfect sense in my head but I really need your help with feedback so I know where you went astray. Again, wishing I had a BETA to slam on the brakes when necessary.

* * *

 **Chapter 8: Oblivion**

 **Corrax Entry, Testament of the Slayer, Chapter 9**

 _His abject failure stands as a monument, a warning to all enemies of DOOM. His grief, unmatched by even the Umbral Expanse. His eternal hatred, gluttoned with impermeable loss. Tempered by the ashes of his spawn, the Wretch set out on a pilgrimage from which there would be no return. In our eagerness to make an example, we created a hound, an insurmountable challenge. Our efforts were nothing. Nothing could purge the relentless scab that rots the slaves of Doom, the teeth behind the bark,_ _their fleshy sheaths populated by no more than blisters, aching for what once was. T_ _he all-consuming Inferno, glutted with realms, quenched by the blood of its fallen inhabitants, has splintered. It threatens to spread and so, the cancerous cycle of life will begin anew._

The DOOM Slayer does not deal in death, nor broken bones or torn bodies. I suspect it is merely a means for an end that will never come. For what more can there be in His atoms than an all-consuming void reflecting back through a shattered mirror?

* * *

 **"We were long overdue for some failure but this proves my hypothesis was correct."**

 **"Spare me your ignorant rambling. You failed to keep an eye on him . . .** _again_ **! We need confirmation and now, outsiders have come to meddle with our sleeping foe. _Your People!_ "**

 **"MY . . . Failure!? Who was the one that got him battling demons in the hold? You could have ruined everything.** **No, I know the truth. You panicked, sought to kill him outright, but that 'plan' has never worked out for your kind before, now has it?"**

 **"Calm, doctor. You do not want to feel my contempt. In any case, t** **hat was not my doing."**

 **"Oh, sure . . . you mean his own body tried to kill itself. That's absurd. "**

 **"Is it? Don't act so surprised. I assume cancer is not unheard of? A random clump of rebel matter that breaks all means of regulation, metastasizes, and when it can longer sustain itself on the fragments of its peers. . . simply slips into the bloodstream in a desperate bid to propagate itself. In its singular need to survive and expand, it threatens the entire organism regardless of the fact that it used to ensure the superior's eminent survival. And because of its treachery, the being that it feeds on begins to waste away and inevitably, the cancer perishes. By recklessly shrugging off its chains, its death has long been assured . . . and yet, it does so for the ever brief promise of life."**

 **"I'm well aware of this already. I'm a doctor."**

 **"No. That is precisely the reason for your ignorance. It is a parallel for his own mutiny, the one that landed him in our clutches . . . for a time. We should be under no illusions that he has, indeed, regained his memory. I** **should have foreseen it, the flesh's own attempt at integrating the dual natures of the whelp. We cannot survive without Argent and his attempts to curb that urge led to some fail-safe to force the mind's compliance. An extremely rare phenomenon only exhibited when assimilating the strongest we find."**

 **"Obviously, the attempt failed. The man was still clearly lucid enough to throw down his life. Otherwise, those parasites wouldn't have let him. Even though he came into contact with the cursed marker, he did not go berserk as I had intended. The goddamn situation was perfect, I couldn't have asked for a better set-up. It should have fueled his hatred, forced him to direct violence on the crew. Based on the incident in Res Ops, I'm under no illusions that the quarry could care less about civilians but he would never deliberately endanger their lives. Doing so would further disassociate himself from his identity beyond repair. When that fury has no outlet, the subject begins to self-harm in every case we have studied but I was never aware it was a choice. It simply fueled his own sacrifice for the lives of the crew.**

 **"I offered him the knowledge to stow your so-called Lazarus Wave away from danger. He rejected it."**

 **"So much pain. So much grief. It is no wonder to me now that he used it as an excuse to end his cursed fate, the same one that befell his own flesh and. . ."**

 **"Stop. We do not speak of it!"**

 **"Oh, don't tell me your kind is going cold-turkey on your own deeds. You ruined his life beyond reproach. You took the one thing he cared about and turned it against him."**

 **"He sold his Order, his honor, his very soul for this. We had every right!"**

 **"A line your overeager disciples crossed all too readily. It's all semantics in any case. Can I still count on your aid in our struggle?"**

 **"You insult me, you boast and swagger and you have the nerve to assure our agreement in its midst!?"**

 **"I wanted to make clear what my stakes are in this. I sold my soul for this alliance too. It is invigorating to see some semblance of thoughtful silence on your part."**

 **"Hmph . . . I've heard of some treachery in your world, a whelp called Saren. Is his fate something you aspire to, Chakwas . . . or should I say, Pierce?"**

 **"I aspire to make it right, Abbadon. Nothing more."**

 **"And if you become my puppet?"**

 **"Then I will lose my mind knowing that this contingency will bear fruit. If indeed I am under the illusion of free will . . . then I will be no different than the rest of the masses, and my sacrifice will be of no consequence."**

 **"That seems . . . reckless."**

 **"You know that little tale you told me . . . about cancer? You claim I am ignorant of its message and you declined to reveal it. No, I am aware, Abbadon. I am that reckless sac of shit and I will do anything to ensure our immediate survival."**

 **"So you do understand . . . that when the time comes . . . He must die?"**

 **". . . Yes."**

 **"Go now and make sure MY Aberration stays mines."**

* * *

She cradled the gurgling turian in her arms. There was no stemming the stream gaping from the hole that was his jaw. The ground team milled around, striving to save as many as they could but the valiant dead had already long departed. Her tears came suddenly, a hot, wet trail of weakness. Something that ironically granted strength to the turian, his suddenly outstretched talons weakly curling along her cheek. Alarmed and ashamed by how quickly it had been spotted, the caress also brought back memories of Archangel's hideout but the feelings then were unfamiliar, hollow in comparison to the tidal wave that besieged her and lay stretched out like a stain on a clothesline. A stain that grew with the spill of even greater mistakes.

Had she ever seen the electric blue of his lidded gaze before? Twin cobalt suns vying for life, trying to peek through a curtain of stubborn shade as rays of light fled across a silvery pool before they were stamped forever out of sight.

" ** _I . . . I . . . never . . ."_**

He coughed, hissing as he did so, trying to clutch at his partly missing mouth in futility. It was a gaping hole of blue splatter, leaving his rows of serrated teeth naked to the air as if someone had simply ripped off the turian equivalent of a human cheek. The wheeze of air blew through his gritted teeth like the gaping maw of a cave, foreboding.

Logically, it was a good sign that some force remained which heartened his life prospects and slightly comforted Shepard's terror but not the rage that sought to take away a dedicated and loyal soldier.

No . . . a friend.

Despite the veil of pain, the turian's eyes followed her without fail. He was certainly not distrustful the way a rescued civilian would act through severe trauma but it was a look unlike anything she had seen. Hungry . . . restrained . . . but most of all, a carnal need that underscored it.

"How . . ." he wheezed as he suddenly inhaled a spurt of blood. A quick, merciless shove into his bony chest shot it out of his gaping jaw.

Despite the silent pleading of Shepard's gaze, he collected himself for another go. **_"How . . . do I look?"_**

He snorted at his own joke, hissing through a lone mandible but fell silent as soon as he noticed a partial weight suddenly fall off her shoulders and he got the feeling the cause wasn't the running joke.

"I think we successfully evened it up there, partner. Now, your rocket scar wont be so lonely any more. You know, your face has probably become prime real estate by now."

"Good . . . now I can start charging rent."

It wasn't a particularly sparkling jest but it did the job. Threw dirt over the other thing she suddenly feared now looking into his eyes. It was a silly preoccupation, a downright selfish one at that but she found herself in pure dread at the thought of enabling Garrus to lay out his feelings on the table for real. As if she could really go on pretending she hadn't shuffled through her short-stack of fan-mail on house-arrest, and settled upon his scrawl, the effort behind it an adamant quality known only to one person in her life. His chance of departing would make it easier for him to leave one final flippant finger to her self-esteem hanging in the air before he crossed the divide. She couldn't take the weight of such a complicated and delicate creature called love. Not if it became horribly one-sided.

She proffered a little weak smile before abruptly searching around with a wild look. "Karin! Where the hell are you?"

"I just checked the CCTV. Other than the fact that Engineering looks like Kool-Aid puke, it doesn't appear that any hostiles remain on the ship. Wherever those sons of bitches went, they took good lives with them. I'll go look for her, Commander." James volunteered, the subtext of his preamble clear to all in the room.

"What about the rest of our casualties? Will they last?"

Puzzled, James turned back to her and gave that funny look. It became clear that Shepard's mind lay absent. "Captain, none of them will. They're already gone."

* * *

 **Having been destroyed and put back together twice already, it was no wonder that revolt was the only thing on my mind. Channeling my inner Frankenstein, that's all that remained. Revolt against my revolting existence. Revolt against all the lives that didn't belong to me. Revolt against my captors.** **Fighting for scraps, shreds of my former self.**

 **They had done their job well. They had poked and prodded, isolated, berated, restrained, beat, and gouged a beast until they finally got one. I knew nothing about my captors except the obvious. Butchers in Lab Coats, orange and black hexagons beaming on their sleeves. Suspended in a numbing cold, my eyes the only sockets of abuse seeing some use, I began to mentally chew on the significance of that coat of arms, masticated until the thought turned sour and rancid . . . and then chewed some more. It was the hatred I could barely swallow as they cut into me with every stroke of a pen, every box ticked off a checklist.**

 **I couldn't remember what brought me here except pain, as if I were constantly reliving the agony of my birth, a theoretical certainty I couldn't identify with at the moment. All I could remember from those past times was that systemic desensitization happened to be a vaguely familiar notion of mines.**

 **I see them attempt to communicate with me, vying to capture my undivided attention, resorting to snapped fingers, flashlights, needles as if my body were not enough to sate their ravenous, parasitic hunger. They were harvesting me, I knew it. When I had first emerged from that tranquilized slumber, my soul was blistering and I was born into that rage, knowing no more than gnashing teeth and torn flesh dangling in my maw. Now, pins and needles and intravenous tubes** **maligned my body, extracting that fire, my life-force to fuel the infernal machinations of my kidnappers. It kept** **me suspended in a near-vegetative state.** **The din that plagued my hearing, the constant roaring of air, had become my mufflers to the world; my only cover in this godforsaken storm.**

 **But even that could not backpedal the natural evolution of the senses, a multi-headed hydra that refused to accept defeat. Cut off the sense of hearing and it learns to override the noise, bit by bit until I could process their jeering as they took in my abhorrent form.**

 **Better if they thought I was some dumb animal. God knows nobody in the world ever gave a damn about common humanity when they trespassed against others in waves of scorched battle, bursting bombs, and a hail of death. Maybe I was like some sort of pet, a Cerberus more like, but a pet nonetheless to the King of the Underworld. If only I had been graced by the dignity of such a detail. Reality was most certainly worst.**

 **Nevertheless, I began to draw my gaze inward, training it on my loathsome identity, the first thing of note being that I certainly was not human. I pondered this fact and wondered why I would use this relative example. What is a human?** **The miserable little pack of callous intellectuals milling around me day and night? The PMC grunts waving their guns around like licenses? Human no longer remained singular because they all were part of the same, restless machine in their own right. A super-organism composed of annoying, hovering insects. No, that would be a compliment. These creatures do not act in unison, remaining always at odds with each other over the next test, the next hook-up, the next orgasm.**

 **I was painfully aware of the little hibernating lives they extracted from my body one by one, shriveled up little limbs hugged close to their bulbous bodies in the self-reassurance of a hug from death.** **The grief of postpartum invaded my senses and hacked at me periodically, and they became my measures of time in the beginning.** **I was waiting for the same comfort, that self-embrace of death . . . but we didn't meet halfway. It was a** **s if I were in a coma, deciding whether I would peris** **h on that slab or rise as a zombie, and forever live a half-life.**

 **Oblivion.**

 **I learned to sync myself into the daily happenstance of my observers, the schedules of neophytes. It became my little game, putting myself in the skin of a key player in the office politics I was so oddly used to. Day by day, I would watch them pass me by, some offering a curious glance my way in their hurry. And day by day, I would relish the way their spines visibly rattled in their sudden frigidity. I craved those precious moments when they inevitably realized my shadow, _my_ gaze was pursuing them in a bid to communicate some measure of the raw polar fire debilitating me. Their fear was inspiring, more than I cared to admit. I noted the synchronicity of their habits to such a degree that like clockwork, I predicted the slanderous brewing of coffee and anticipated the exact second when the acrid, old pot of joe begins to infect the air with its rot. ****Foolish slaves of monotony.**

 **But something was different during this vicious cycle, when the lights had been torn down, and I was greeted by a hand pressed against the tank, my very own zoo exhibit. Over time, it became many more hands, all silently hovering against my cage. No discernible noise from the bodies those arms derived from. The Nephilitic envoy coalesced against the screen, dream-like snouts gazing fondly up at me.**

 **"Soon," they muttered.**

 **"Soon."**

* * *

"Ow, Jeez, that's my shoulder your plastering! Hands off!"

Shepard muttered an apology, resisting the urge to prop her feet on Edi's station. At the moment, her knees felt like dead weights and sitting just didn't seem to cut it anymore. The blur of FTL travel enshrouded the ship but the luminescence failed to lift her spirits. After they had pulled the crew from their emergency bunkers, the ground team were left scratching their head when much of the crew couldn't identify the threat that had pushed them into hiding, beyond the fact that a hulking behemoth had been escorted onto the ship. By head count, a war materials specialist had gone missing and four on-duty guards were pronounced dead, few signs of what they were fighting were left behind. These were people dying on her negligent watch.

The thought of an attack on the Normandy had awoken a nameless fear in her heart and seeing it become a reality was just another dumbbell to the weight she carried on her shoulders. The Collectors had been efficient abductors. Those of the crew that had resisted left little traces except bullet dents, every bit of human and alien material left behind was gathered with clinical efficiency and the ship scrubbed of their fallen as well. But this was clearly a more wanton kind of destruction. Engineering abnormalities, claw marks on the walls, suspicious stains that could not have been all blood. Yet the meticulous process of disarmament presented a puzzle piece that didn't quite fit.

It was odd to be on the receiving end of debriefing when she was often the one who dictated the score. Once again, Joker had a clue as to what transpired.

And for the millionth time that hour, she pondered her hand in this massacre. There was no contest, no way to even politically spin this disaster. The Collectors had attacked without warning and as her crew had continuously reminded her, there was no way she could have anticipated such a blow. But this . . . this was all on her. She had decided to take in an unknown quandary instead of turned him over to the Alliance.

For what? Was it sympathy? Was it the way those monstrous eyes shined . . . the way her own eyes shined in the ashes of Mindoir? Or the many others living under the boot and blade of raiders, hijackers, paramilitaries? Anybody who ever suffered at the hands of thugs like Cerberus.

He was unwilling . . . but that posed no problem to indoctrination. She took him in without the empirical reasoning, without the necessary precautions, and she had gotten Garrus and the crew severely harmed for her faith.

And still she refused to dismiss his memory entirely. Jane mourned the loss of that tortured soul in space, despising the fact that she had to give up on him, to let this creature wander among the stars to death as she had done not so long ago. And here she was, breathing and he never would be.

It was unforgivable.

She couldn't help but turn her turbulent thoughts toward Garrus. When he had been consumed by hatred, and had nearly killed the culprit betrayer of his team, he asked her a question she had never been able to answer directly.

 _"What could you have possibly done . . . knowing that your team was betrayed, was slaughtered because of your implicit trust? Wouldn't you want to avenge the fallen? The good people who could have been the only ones to bring light to a morally crippled station. Wouldn't you want to_ ** _kill_** _the one who introduced the darkness back into the world?"_

 _"I'm not sure . . . but I wouldn't let it change me."_

 _"That's what I thought . . . until it happened. And you're heading down the same road I've been lost in. Cerberus minds, Cerberus ships, Cerberus technologies. Spirits, what makes you think that any of us are the same? Or whether our loyalties remain intact? For all you know, I could be the rat. I could be the traitorous puppet of warlords that slay's my friends while they sleep. . ."_

Shepard remembered how he turned away from her then, ashamed and clutching at that skin graft as if he were considering ripping it off in self-flagellation for his mistakes, the other talons curled so harshly at his side until his knuckles dripped royal blood from his eviscerated palm. She wanted to reassure him, to tell him that sparing Sidonis would be right in the end but his brutality was on-point. He had presented her with a dilemma she had no answer for . . and thus, _he_ became the first to break down her choices, her sense of right and wrong into the sensation of drowning, unaware of either up or down. This was her million-credit question.

Jane had heard enough and she found herself walking out of the cockpit without a single word. Shepard couldn't bear to see the accusatory glances coming her way, damning her to incompetency.

She needed him. She needed Garrus. Maybe it was still incredibly selfish of her, assuming that they share the same traumas. Blood roared in her ears as she took the stairs in her eagerness. It was all so obvious. Even if she didn't say anything, she was determined to be at his side.

Dr. Chakwas immediately caught sight of her and knew it was futile. Nonetheless, she deposited her sterilized gloves into a nearby bio-hazard bin and moved to unlock the door. The doctor emerged and sealed the door behind her, standing in place as if she were guarding it. Shepard didn't like that.

"Is he stable?" She tentatively asked, after a few moments of silence.

". . . Yes." Her hesitation was worrying. Probably didn't want to get her hopes up, not wanting to make the situation potentially worse.

"Well, how soon will Garrus be up and running?"

"Commander, how can I put this gently? He's got multiple contusions, bruised ribs, a dislocated jaw, not to mention a fairly major artery running through his mandible has been **_completely_** severed. There's also the small matter of sedatives not doing a damn bit of good to numb the nerve nexus there. If the pain continues, we will have to kill the nerves permanently and it will destroy all chances for a full recovery. I am doing my best to keep his condition stable. Gave him a transfusion. Luckily, we had some of his blood-type handy for a rainy day. We're keeping his mandible in cryogenic storage to see if it can be reset but that would require someone with much more in-depth knowledge of turian systems than I do. Our best bet remains the Citadel."

"And how long will he be there, provided there's no complications?"

"I might be projecting the prognosis somewhat since I'm not an xenobiologist but if I were pressed for a time frame. . . Well, when he's cleared for duty, it would be sometime between . . . four to seven weeks."

"A month? Karin, the war could be won or lost within that time!"

"Well, the Reapers will have to wait for this boy. That's the price of recovery."

The steely look the doctor gave her . . . Shepard sobered up and slipped into the business-like persona that had made up much of her outward dealings with diplomats and politicians. They all were thinking it. The elephant in the Room was Shepard herself. The blame had shifted entirely onto her shoulders.

Some part of her always knew she would have to deal with this war alone. So be it. The apologies would have to wait.

"Just keep him _alive_ ," she snarled lowly through gritted teeth and swiftly walked out as soon as she had entered. Reluctant feet slinked down the elevator towards the War Room to deliver the bad news to Hackett. The night was not over yet. Not by a long shot.

* * *

Since the good doctor had picked his jaw up off the floor and back to where it belonged, Vakarian, under innumerable duress, found himself at a loss for words. Rather, he was terrified to speak because his jaw threatened to snap off in retaliation for his terrible attempts at flirting. While a rocket to the face trumps the flashy card, this particular scar ached deeper than that concussion. He wanted to keen, to mourn the loss of a beloved appendage that granted many of his wishes during some rough patches in his unsatiated libido. The instinctive flick of each mandible in question sounding-off elicited a rogue's gallery of phantom pain.

At some point during his recovery, he descended into a terrible fever. The thought of an unfulfilled sexual obligation soon morphed into terror, of the beasts that lurked on the fringes of total Reaper Annihilation. What are they? Where did they come from? Why now? And why the hell do the bandages feel so tight? He wanted desperately to scratch that itch arising from a non-existent mouthpart but he always remembered his father's teachings. Outdated by all means but not without its enduring kernel of truth, as was everything he learned from him.

A dark plague on turian history, a time when you could wake up and find your mouth frothing with blood until you choked in a deluge of bubbles and parasites fled their host from every orifice. Back when insects awoke primal fears in every turian's heart. For humans, it was snakes or spiders that became instinctive objects of loathing. On a mercurial planet made of quicksilver, the buzz of the night was something else. You see, turian's were not unaccustomed to the idea of ruthless cycles, of a feculent cleansing that could rob a village of its people within days. For turians, calendars didn't develop as a way to standardize crop-laying or refine stargazing, it came as a warning, warning us of the coming of the boogeyman. Droves had died before they could figure out what and when made them tick. Insects that crept in the night into the cradle of a sleeping brother or sister, and they would wake in abject jubelence, ignorant of the deposited eggs festering within the crook of their mandibles. They could taste their rancid entrance as they scratched or crushed the annoyance . . . but on they went, oblivious until the seizures struck hold, turned your talons upon anyone who came close until your agonizing expiration brought forth a plague. If the disease didn't kill the village, the paranoia in the people did its job first.

He was no stranger to Rienfield's condition and in fact, it could be why he sympathized so dearly with his condition. He was blinded by the lumbering monster he saw but the rot of death was a beast far worse, one that turned good people into mere sacks of meat. The old, primitive photos terrified him when he was young and it continued to trouble him everywhere he turned as an adult until it became a way to recenter his perspective, remind him of the universal adage: ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Garrus didn't really know how others made peace with death but this was his own way.

So he ignored the way the cloth irritated his carapace, ignored the sensation of something threatening to burst through, ignored the notion of parasites slithering in his hot veins, of it frothing past the bandages that had failed to cast shade over the horror within. Barely excoriating a phobia into submission. In truth, the only thing that stopped him from surrendering to terror was the thought that at any moment, Shepard would walk through that door and feel that much more lonely from his weakness.

So he endured in his fever as Dr. Chakwas tended to him with medicine and cold-compresses. Vague impressions flitted through his mind and the dabbing of ice became the cold kisses of a beautiful corpse Shepard. The way it molded to his carapace, the way it was so close to darting into a cave of tearing teeth without hesitation. At the moment, he welcomed anything that could silence the lurid blur of heat.

His lungs rose and fell haggardly, the secondary echo of his venting carapace predictably following. The capillaries in his plates dilated and compressed to the rhythm of his lifeline, each desperately pumping the excess inferno from his clammy body. He didn't want to pass away with barely a glimmering return to his senses.

"In and out," he breathed.

"In and out."

Rogue images of infestation flitted past his mind's eye.

"In and out."

The droning buzz of fledgling wings taking flight began to drown out the staccato beeping of the monitor.

"In and out!"

Not even the drawl of his voice could disperse them.

 **"IN AND OUT!"**

He felt them worming in, surrounding him, assimilating his form. He writhed, he shook, and trembled on the cot in utter delirium until he found himself wrestling with the good doctor for control of his own arm. The bestial side of him fought harshly, instinctually enshrouded, until he realized what his gnashing limb was targeting: The bandages. His drumming blood ceased on its warpath and he consciously let go and his arm was settled against his body. Confusion plagued his senses once more as the mouth he didn't realize was screaming alarmingly grew still.

"Calm down, Garrus! What the hell has gotten into you?"

Dr. Chakwas happened to be right of course. She was always right. Hell itself had indeed touched him, inseminated him with the careless tearing of flesh.

He salivated and drooled through his halting and staggered explanation. "I can't do this, doc. I can't silence them. These thoughts. Arghhh . . . they're eating me alive. I can't . . . I can't _feel_ who I am anymore."

The turian panted like a pitiful dog too weak to stand, emaciated beyond belief.

"Oh hush, you big baby. You take in a foolish boy playing around with rockets and he'll sneak out of the infirmary when your back is turned so he can go off to save the galaxy just because he feared being left out. Hit him with a fever and he wails. Really, Vakarian, I expected more out of you." She thumbed the bandages and tutted in disapproval.

"Look at what you've done. Now, I have to redo your bandages," she chastised. Slowly, the mummy was unraveled, peeling away from his clammy throat in a dizzying loop, crested horns untied like a base to a hammock. And slowly, the pressure crept away from the restraint and into the limelight. The doctor had shrieked long before the peeling of newborn flesh had been silenced.

"What the **fuck?!** " she gasped and Garrus found himself puzzling over the unnatural sound of an expletive coming from her.

 _"C'mon,"_ he slurred, _"have you never seen a rocket scar before?"_ He remembered being stupidly smug in grandiose gratification of his retort even as his skull was actively listing to one side in a perpetually awkward tilt.

His annoyance grew with the burden until he heard wet slaps against the side of his maw in a rapid arthropodic cadence. At first, he carelessly dismissed it as his mandible working through the collected pool of saliva. The turian's immediate thought was to lap up the irritating amount of slobber dribbling from his chin which wasn't hard for turians to accomplish with a long, dexterous tongue. Not wanting to get his arm lathered, he curled his tongue around the slime, and instantly wished he hadn't. His taste buds pinged him in alarm and the humanoid raptor recoiled in disgust, now valuing expediency over cleanliness. Vakarian brushed his offending forearm over the breadth of his facial carapace and like a bloom of pollen, the mephitic scent hit him like a freight-train.

The melodic musk of turian pheromones was unique to each member of the species and though it was a subtle art, the detection of it became an IFF trigger for the practiced olfactory senses and the instinct had saved him many times over. But this thing . . . wasn't his. This dangling, overgrown appendage exuded a completely different set of pheromones, imbued with a wild heat and the punch of a citrus poison like a kind of gangrenous limb.

His three-fingered claw pulled away with a sticky, pus-like substance strung like cords between his two forefingers. Again, Garrus reached in shock towards the source again at a snail's pace and tentatively settled his talons on a pulsating mass that shouldn't have existed, thorns bristling along its length. It was a crude approximation of a mandible but it was much too big. At his touch, the fake mandible incomprehensibly . . . unfurled. It peeled apart, fleshy strings orchestrating the emergence of miniature, multi-layered pincers, each experimentally clacking against its serrated partner like a puppet with a life of its own. From between its fleshy gaps, a gelatinous yellow ooze snaked its way through the passages until it seemed his facial carapace was _dripping_ at the seams.

"Doctor?" He questioned lowly, begging for some sort of voice of reason to tell him it isn't what he thought it was, that he was delirious. When Chakwas upheld the deadly silence, a bitter sense of betrayal seethed to the surface.

"Karin . . . What is this?"

He tried not to think about the sensation of the _fake_ settling back into its compact form but her continued silence was not helping matters. But how could she begin to explain what was happening to him? Everything that had transpired these past few hours had been unlike anything they had faced before. Sovereign's ambush, the Collector's abductions, none had been able to accomplish such an insidious Indoctrination. It had driven a clueless human stark mad with disassociation and denial, unaware of the full grasp it had taken of his corpse. And his sacrifice to the stars had not been enough because his mutation, this _menace_ , lived on in _him._

So these beings drew the breath of life from the dead but it was a half-life. And Garrus Tiberius Vakarian knew then that oblivion would follow wherever he went and nothing . . . . _nothing_ would ever be the same again.

". . .

Oh god."


End file.
